The Friends of Pancho Villa

by James Carlos Blake

  ‘‘He’s a cheeky spitface,” Trillo said. “Don’t waste your time thinking about him.”

  “Fucker thinks he’s big just because he’s got some cattle, plenty of money in the bank,” Rosalío said, wrestling the steering wheel over the bumpy road. “But he was nothing but a damn bootlick when he lived on our place.”

  “What are you talking about?’ Pancho asked.

  ‘‘Lozoya. He used to be a foreman for the family that owned Canutillo before the Revolution—the Jurados. You didn’t know? Marianuela told me—my woman in Parral. She used to work for the Jurados too. She says Lozoya was a bully, all the workers hated him. But he was always kissing the Jurados’ asses, and damn if it didn’t make him a rich man.”

  According to Rosalío’s woman, when the Revolution broke out and started moving toward the south of Chihuahua, the Jurados grabbed up all their money and fled for Mexico City. A few weeks later they sent a telegram to Lozoya authorizing him to sell every last head of stock, all the farm implements on the place, and every piece of carved Spanish furniture in the casa grande. For this service, the Jurados permitted him to keep half of all the money he got for the sales; the rest he sent to them in Veracruz.

  The hacienda property had fetched a great deal of money, of course, and it was widely believed that Lozoya had kept more than his rightful share of it. The Jurados, after all, had been in no position to do much about it, even if they’d suspected they were being cheated. “Marianuela says it’s a fact he kept the best of the Jurado cattle for himself,” Rosalío said. “Those were the animals he used to start his own ranch.”

  The story infuriated Villa. The way he saw it, even though the stock and property had been sold years before Canutillo was deeded to him, it all would have come to him with the estate if Lozoya hadn’t sold it. His logic could work like that when he was angry, and when it did, it wasn’t any use to argue with him. “That son of a rotten whore stole from me!” he thundered. “Drive to his place,” he told Rosalío. “Now!”

  Trillo started to protest, but the look Villa gave him changed his mind. He shrugged and pulled his hat down tight.

  The road to Lozoya’s ranch was hardly more than a rutted wagon trail, and the Dodge bounced and banged the whole way, raising even more dust than before. They must have seen us coming from a long way off. When we finally rolled into the courtyard and came to a stop in front of his big house, Lozoya was standing in his shirtsleeves at the top of the steps to his verandah, wearing a pistol on his hip. His boys were positioned everywhere, about a dozen of them that I spotted at a glance, all of them armed with rifles. Claro and Daniel were smiling tightly. Each held a shotgun across his lap and out of sight, and they had their feet set, ready to jump out of the car. I was holding my cocked pistol between my knees and silently cursing Villa. There were at least thirteen of them, probably more, against us six—and they were spread out while we were bunched in the car. Horseshit odds. An image of Rosa Blanca’s finely smooth ass, naked on a moonlit bed, flashed through my mind—and of Soledad’s wicked smile.

  “You!” Villa called out, and beckoned Lozoya to the car. Lozoya hesitated, then slowly came down the steps. He didn’t look afraid, just wary, like he was expecting Villa to start shooting at any moment. He stopped a few feet from Pancho’s door. Now he could see the guns in our hands and for a second he looked sad.

  “You’ve got thirty days,” Villa told him, “to return every head of Canutillo stock you sold, every piece of equipment, every fucking stick of furniture, you understand? Anything you can’t return—a cow, a shovel, a rocking chair, I don’t care what—you’re going to pay me for it. In gold.”

  Lozoya gaped at him. Of all the possible troubles he might have imagined having with Villa, this one had obviously never crossed his mind. “Return the stock?” he said. “Pay you . . . ? But I was authorized, you see—Don Jurado, he . . . Oh hell, if I’d known you were going to be the next—”

  “Thirty days!” Villa said. “Or I’ll fertilize my rose garden with you.” He tapped Rosalío on the arm and gestured for him to drive off.

  As the car wheeled around, I was sure Lozoya would order his boys to open fire, but he didn’t. He just stood there and watched us go, his face hard and full of hate.

  As soon as we were out the courtyard gate and jouncing back toward the main road, Claro and Daniel broke out laughing. “Did you see that fucker’s face!” Daniel said. “He couldn’t believe we went right in there and told him pay up or die!”

  Villa was staring at the road ahead, smiling, looking well satisfied. Rosalío was pouring sweat and grinning like an idiot as he drove.

  Trillo mopped his face with a handkerchief and gave me an arched-browed look over the front seat. Within the next few days he would persuade Villa that he hadn’t been wronged; that if Lozoya hadn’t sold the property as he had been ordered to do by his patrón, the federal army would soon enough have taken it all for itself; that in any case, nothing that could be rustled or stolen would have remained on the place for long. Villa would come to agree with him, but he would tell Trillo not to let Lozoya know he was off the hook. “Let the bastard sweat out the thirty days.”

  As we got back to the main road Daniel uncorked a bottle of tequila and we passed it around. Even Pancho took a drink—and got a chorus of cheers for it. We were singing “Valentina,” a great song of the Revolution, as we headed down the road and into the blaze of the setting sun.

  •

  While Lozoya was sweating out the ultimatum Villa had no intention of enforcing, Trillo made a trip to the capital to close a deal for a new thresher and to buy a boxful of new books. He also brought back some interesting news about the upcoming presidential election. At the lunch table under the patio oaks, he told us that Plutarco Calles, who had been serving as minister of government for Obregón, would certainly be Obregón’s choice to succeed him. But there were some in the capital who were strongly opposed to Calles and had been encouraging Adolfo de la Huerta, who had done such a wonderful job when he was interim president, to run against him.

  “Excellent!” Villa said. “Fito was a great president for six months; he’ll be an even greater one for four years.”

  “Except he doesn’t want the job,” Trillo said. In fact, de la Huerta had discouraged his supporters from pressing his candidacy, and he had assured his old friends Calles and Obregón that he had no ambition to be the president.

  Villa shook his head and said it would be a damn shame if Fito didn’t run. “I’d do anything to help him get elected.”

  Trillo stared at him glumly and said, “Yes, I know you would. Everybody knows you would. That’s the trouble. Obregón knows it. Calles knows it.”

  Pancho made a face of mock fright, and then shrugged, but Trillo didn’t smile.

  “Hey, compadre, what are you worried about?” Pancho said. “Fito told them he wasn’t going to run, and if he doesn’t run, Old One-Arm and the Turk don’t have any reason to worry about us.”

  “No, they don’t.” Trillo said. “But then they’re not the sort of men to take anybody’s word for anything, not even de la Huerta’s.”

  “Oh hell, Miguelito, you worry too much,” Villa said. ‘‘And I’ll tell you one damn thing: if they ever do come after me, they’ll need better guns than what they gave me for a present.” Daniel and Claro chuckled at that. Villa looked at me and said, “Right, mano?”

  I smiled.

  He gestured at me and said, “This one can’t be killed by bullets, did you guys know that? It’s true. He’s made of magic. As long as I keep him next to me, I’ll always be all right.” He turned back to me and said, “You and me, little brother, we’re going to live forever, aren’t we?”

  “Certainly,” I said. “Or until we die, whichever comes first.”

  The boys all got a good laugh out of that.

  •

  In July, about three months
after our visit to Lozoya’s, we received an invitation to the christening of the infant son of one of our old compañeros, Jose Sabas, whom we’d always called El Flaco because he was skinny as a sugar stalk. He wanted Pancho to be the boy’s godfather, and he invited him to bring all the boys to the celebration. He lived on a small farm near the village of Río Florida, about ten miles outside of Parral. Pancho accepted, of course—he never turned down a compadre’s request to sponsor a child’s baptism, and by now he had nearly a hundred godchildren. He was in the mood for a fiesta and wanted to make the trip on horseback. Such fine summer weather was just right for a ride in the saddle, and he thought we ought to make a grand show of ourselves, as in the old days. Trillo dissuaded him from that idea, reminding him that Flaco was a poor man who would be unable to provide for so many guests and horses. He had invited all of us only out of politeness, Trillo said—if we went there by the dozens we would only embarrass him. Pancho realized Miguel was right. He decided Rosalío would drive us there in the Dodge—him, me, and Miguel. And, of course, Claro and Daniel.

  •

  Flaco was something of a famous man in Río Florida for having served in Villa’s elite corps of Dorados, and when the villagers learned that Villa himself would be in attendance for the christening and the celebration to follow, they all contributed what they could to help Flaco provide a proper banquet for so illustrious a guest. There was kid roasted on spits, platters of grilled chicken, bowls of pork-in-chile stew, pots of rice and beans, stacks of tortillas. There were jugs of beer and mescal, and to make sure the supply of spirits would not run out, we’d brought several cases of tequila. Garlands hung from the trees and rooftops. A string band played at one end of the street, a brass band blared at the other, and a team of boys were kept busy sprinkling the street with water cans to keep down the dust raised by all the dancing feet.

  Villa danced and danced, as always. The only dancing I’d done since losing my leg was with Rosa Blanca—at her relentless insistence—but only in the privacy of our house. It was fun to whirl her slowly about the parlor, and she always praised my grace. I knew she’d never admit it, but what she really meant was “Not bad for a guy with a wooden leg.” I had steadfastly refused to dance in public. I remembered too well when I had danced with grace.

  When he took a break to eat a bowl of beans and a few tortillas, Villa prodded me to dance with the girl he’d been spinning around. She was standing under a nearby tree, watching us with a smile and still panting from the last wild dance with Pancho. She was a light cinnamon beauty with tight, hard Indian tits.

  “She has eyes for you,” Pancho said. “She asked me who you are and I told her Napoléon Juárez, grandson of Benito and the greatest wooden-legged dancer in all Mexico.”

  “I’m a philosopher,” I said, sipping at my tequila. “Philosophers sit and think and drink—they don’t dance.”

  “Bullshit!” he said—and the way his face brightened I knew it was one of those times he loved best: when he had some bit of knowledge at hand that would win him an argument for certain. “Socrates learned to dance when he was eighty years old, I bet you didn’t know that. An eighty-year-old philosopher learning to dance must look pretty ridiculous, no? But he didn’t give a shit how funny he looked, and he didn’t give a damn how bad he did it, he just wanted to dance. And you know why? Because a life without dancing is a life not fully lived, that’s why. Socrates said so. You think you know better than Socrates? Like hell you do!”

  Trillo joined us at the table as Pancho was making his argument. He was gasping for breath and sweating like he’d been rained on from the effort of his dancing, but he was beaming with happiness. The pretty thing he’d been dancing with sat on his portly lap and patted his face dry with the hem of her skirt.

  “You’re responsible for this,” I said to him, gesturing at Pancho, who was smiling smugly.

  “It’s always gratifying to see one’s student apply his learning so effectively,” Trillo said. The more he had to drink, the more he talked like a professor. The girl yipped at his light pinch of her breast and playfully slapped at his hand.

  “You can’t look any more clumsy dancing on that piece of wood,” Villa said, “than Miguelito here looks doing it on two good feet. But I’d like to see you enjoy yourself half as much.” He leaned across the table and said just loud enough for me to hear: “How good do you think I’d be dancing if you hadn’t kept Garcia from cutting off my leg, eh? I’ll tell you one damn thing: if I had no legs, I’d still go on dancing—I’d dance on my hands—I’d dance on my ass.”

  “General Juárez?”

  The girl was standing beside me, her blouse pasted wetly to those wonderful tits, her eyes hot and bright. “General,” she said, “will you dance with me?”

  Villa grinned. “Listen,” he said, “if she laughs at the way you dance, you can always shoot her. That’ll prove to everybody you’re still the man you used to be.”

  Bastard.

  So I danced, if dancing you could call it. More accurate to say I lurched around. The girl tried to go easy, but her natural spirit was a lot stronger than her good intentions, and she couldn’t help dancing with more vigor than Rosa Blanca and I ever did in our parlor. I hadn’t been out there two minutes when I made a hard misstep and went sprawling on my ass.

  I heard laughter all around us. A red haze closed over me, a rage so strong I felt myself trembling with it. But when I saw the girl gaping down at me, wide-eyed with fear, my anger gave way to a sudden rush of shame. How unmanly to make a lively young girl afraid with a show of bad temper. How shameful to be so cruel as that, even unwittingly.

  Villa was looking at me, not laughing, waiting to see.

  I clapped my hand over my bicep and raised my fist at him: fuck you.

  He laughed and returned the gesture. I smiled at the girl and reached my hand out to her. She grinned happily and helped me up with both hands and we laughed along with everyone else as I adjusted my leg and brushed the dust off the seat of my pants.

  And then we continued our dance. And whether anyone else could call it dancing didn’t mean shit to me. I lurched and stumbled about and staggered badly every once in a while. I swayed unsteadily and bumped against her and the dancers around us, and several times almost fell again. But I wouldn’t have cared if I had. I would have gone right on dancing—­dancing on my ass.

  •

  The next day we drove directly to Parral and took care of some business, then enjoyed a sumptuous supper together in the dining room of the Hotel Hidalgo. Trillo had been nursing a monstrous hangover all day, and suffering further from Villa’s incessant teasing. “You were so drunk,” Villa said, “I bet that poor girl who took you away to her bed last night finally had to mount the bedpost to get some satisfaction.”

  Trillo said he was certain he had done his manly duty, even if he couldn’t recall the details too well.

  Claro and Daniel recalled very well their wild night with two pairs of sisters who were determined to outdo each other in acts of wickedness. They’d been reminding each other of it all day, not that they needed much reminding—they both had slight limps and tended to grimace whenever they sat down and their pants tightened in the crotch. It must’ve been some night. When Trillo began to drone at the supper table about the latest market prices for beef, Villa nudged Daniel and said in a stage whisper, “A man can only do so much with one dick. While you were busy with one girl, didn’t the other one get bored?” He’d never been one for such exotica as three in a bed, but he was always curious about everybody else’s sexual escapades.

  Daniel said both sets of sisters were too imaginative to let things ever get boring. They knew exactly what to do to keep everybody happy all at once.

  Claro said the girls were all so experienced he’d felt like an ignorant child getting very advanced lessons in female geography. “Ay, but what teachers!” he crowed.

 
Villa shook his head in disapproval. “In my youth, country girls were sweet and innocent,” he said. ‘‘Only in the cities could you find girls who did such sinful things. Isn’t that right, little brother?”

  I nodded and said sure, but gave the others a wink and they all laughed. Most of the country girls we’d had our fun with in the old days had been about as innocent as Jezebel.

  “You laugh,” Villa said, “but it’s a hell of a thing when young country girls carry on like all those sisters did with you guys.”

  “It sure is a hell of a thing,” Claro said. “A hell of a fine thing!”

  We laughed all through supper, each of us getting mocked in turn by the others. The plates were cleared away and all of us had brandy except Villa, who stuck with his usual herb tea. I accepted one of Trillo’s cigars—and though he didn’t light his, Pancho took one too, to play with and roll in the corner of his mouth as we joked and told stories of the old days and made plans for the future of Canutillo. It was one of those evenings nobody wanted to see come to an end.

  Around midnight we headed for the house on Zaragoza, Villa and me, Claro and Daniel. Rosalío drove us there and then took the car to his woman’s house, where he spent his nights when we were in Parral. Villa told him not to be late getting there in the morning. He wanted to get an early start back to Canutillo.

  TWENTY-ONE

  A loud bang woke me in the dead of night. I bolted up in bed with my pistol in hand, whirled toward the next two bangs at the window, and very nearly shot the shutter slapping hard in the gusting wind. I let out a long breath and went to the window, leaned out and latched the shutter back in place against the outside wall.

  The trees were swaying in the wind, and silent lightning lit the distant mountains. The moon flashed in and out of a rushing tangle of thick violet clouds. The air smelled of impending rain.