A few days after Emory left, I went down to pick up the tickets, and made a side trip by the post office on my way home. So many months had gone past without further threats from Mark that I was becoming convinced I’d heard the last from him. Yet I didn’t know for certain so I had no choice but to continue my little side trips, and I was always nervous about being seen. While the postal station was blocks from Emory’s office, I always found myself hurrying along, looking both ways in case Nathan might be afield running an errand, or Emory himself might pop up. I had a couple of excuses made up for going there should I be found out—I was picking up a package for Woody, or buying some postage stamps. Thankfully I never had to use my made-to-order escape tactics, because as far as I know I was never discovered.
On this particular afternoon I mounted the steps with my usual caution and circled the postal lobby with my eyes before checking the box. It was empty. I strolled away, thinking maybe Mark had really found himself a “rich lady” who could at least temporarily keep him busy. Yet, surely there were sections of New Orleans that could be dangerous, even for a man like Mark.
One late November day, Woody came to my door around noontime and invited me for a stroll. This departure from his regimented three o’clock walk with Scoop was so unusual that I took off my apron and followed him without question.
Soon he said, hoarsely, “I have a letter from Johnny. He has decided to enlist after all.”
“Oh, no …”
“They’re having quite a bit of trouble over there you know, with Lord Derby’s efforts at getting up enough force, although he has raised thousands and thousands of volunteers. Asquith’s conscription bill is being fought tooth and nail in the House of Commons … it’s a very bad situation.”
“Well, I’m sure—”
“It’s a matter of pride in Britain, you know,” he interrupted, raising his shoulders and setting his jaw. “Johnny wouldn’t be called a shirker, no sir, not he, even if it means sacrificing his studies for a while. I only wish it would be over soon.”
I didn’t know what to say. I walked along, looking at the ground. In a few moments he continued, “It’s such a horrible thing, all those young lads … doesn’t matter whose side they’re on … so many down in the trenches in the cold and the rain, with no food, bullets whizzing by and shrapnel showering—”
“Woody, maybe you oughtn’t to speculate on—”
“Have you read Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage?”
“No.”
“When the novel was first published I used my own money to get enough copies so that my students could read it. It is about war, about the fact the common soldier can’t even tell which way he is going and whether he is making progress … he is lost in an abyss of destruction and death all round … and none of it makes sense to him, you see?”
Then he stopped and turned toward me. “It is a novel of the War Between the States, but it is more than that—a universal story of war and its criminal waste.… Mrs. Cabot, do you ever go to church?”
“No.”
“Neither do I, anymore, but I still pray. Will you pray, too, for Johnny?”
18
Emory returned in mid-December with the good news that Barrista was willing to go on, but unfortunately the trip had taken a strike at his health. A few days before Christmas he became ill—he was in such excruciating pain in his limbs, especially his legs, and running such high temperatures that we were afraid he’d contracted dengue fever while in Mexico. That and typhus were on the spread down there and growing worse. Nursing him, I found myself wondering over and over why anyone in his right mind would want to have anything to do with Mexico. I wished the whole matter of Barrista’s rise to power could be discovered to be a very bad, delirious dream from which I would soon awaken, and Emory could be involved only in land in the San Antonio area, just as I’d believed at first. Now, with the worry of Mark apparently behind me, I would be well settled with Emory into the life I’d so looked forward to when we were married almost two years ago.…
The doctor diagnosed Emory to be suffering from a case of mild influenza, brought on, he surmised, by exhaustion. The prospect of a week of his recuperation in bed was one which I did not particularly relish, because he was already bored and restless. On the way out, the doctor told me privately, “I’ve recommended a week, but I’ll figure in about three days he’ll bust out of there like an angry bull.”
Within forty-eight hours I was marveling at how well the doctor was able to calculate Emory’s behavior, and wondering if doctors in general had the special gift of knowing just what to expect of a patient. I squared my shoulders and prepared for the worst. Although I tried to avoid upsetting him, there were many conversations between us that began innocently enough, yet wound up with him turning away or looking sullen, or growing so irritated that I’d leave the room for fear of setting him off in a rage. One such began with my remarks about Colorado having passed statewide prohibition.
“I read in the newspaper they had ‘bargain days’ shortly before the law took effect, and there were between two and three million dollars spent on liquor during the sale. Can’t you just imagine the same thing happening in Texas? With all the saloons in San Antonio alone probably twice that much money would change hands the first day,” I said, laughing. I stopped and looked at Emory, who didn’t seem so amused.
I was about to shift the subject—I’d become fairly apt at that—when he said thoughtfully, “Do you ever feel that everything is changing, and nothing will ever be the same again? It’s like being caught in quicksand without a rope or a tree in sight, or anything else to catch hold of, and feeling yourself going under.…”
“What does that have to do with—surely we won’t get prohibition here.”
“Why not? Nearly half the country has it now, and anyway, if not that it’s something else. Wilson is campaigning for a national defense plan, and he’ll wind up paying for most of it by jacking up income tax. It used to be free country, you know, but more and more the bastards we vote into office are telling us how to run our lives. Can’t you feel it coming, faster and faster?”
“You look tired. Maybe I ought to leave so you can take a nap.”
“Take a nap,” he repeated snidely. “It’ll all go away then, like a bad stomach ache. They can all go to hell, do you hear?”
“You don’t have to get nasty. It’s nearly dinnertime. I’ll go down and fix you a tray.”
“Don’t bother. I’m not hungry. I want to be alone.”
I needed a breath of fresh air, and could have used a dose of the river’s quieting effect on my nerves. Yet the breeze off the water had a bite to it this time of year. I put on a coat and sat on the front-porch steps, arms wrapped around my knees. Soon two mockingbirds arrived simultaneously at a parcel of food halfway down the walk. They moved away and circled around, then lit into it again, bouncing the tidbit into the air and engaging in a good sparring session that sent a few feathers aflight before both birds realized the prize had been lost in the conquest for it. After a while they flew off in separate directions.
I sat there until it began to grow dark, and I saw the lights of Emory’s Cole Six nose down the street and turn into the drive. Nathan had equipped it with new tires that day. I heard the motor stop and the door open and close, and thought again how right Emory had been to insist Nathan live with us. He took great care of everything that was Emory’s—including his automobile. He kept it in perfect running condition all the time and spent hours waxing it and polishing the trim. In fact I had kidded him once that when he wasn’t busy shining his own shoes—a task which consumed much of his spare time—he was shining Emory’s car.
He’d seen me as he passed, and walked around to wish me good evening and ask about Emory. “A little testy,” I said. “The doctor was here today. Uncanny how well he predicts Emory’s moods. Wish I had the same talent.”
“You’re not alone,” he said, and sat down. “Where I grew up there was a d
octor like that. The mill kept him on to take care of injuries and look after the families of the employees. He did everything from dispensing medicine to delivering babies. Doc Barnes knew everybody, and everybody liked him.
“I knew him before my mother married Sam, because he came down to the depot once in a while for a shoeshine. After they got married and she took sick, I’d go down to Doc’s office and pick up her medicine. I think he felt bad there wasn’t much he could do for her.”
“I guess he stayed pretty busy, with so many injuries at the mill.”
“Yes, he did at that.… I remember going by his office one day, just as they were bringing in a head-end dogger who’d gotten his leg sliced by a saw blade. He was out cold, whiter than that summerhouse over there. I thought he was dead. But when Doc Barnes hit his leg with iodine, he shot up like he was resurrected from the grave.”
“My heavens, he doesn’t sound like a very gentle man.”
“Oh, he was, nothing wrong with Doc. He was kind to my mother, and honest about the fact he couldn’t help her any. He didn’t have much besides epsom salts, castor oil, quinine, and calomel. What happened wasn’t his fault.…”
Just then Emory bellowed my name from his sickbed.
“Well, speaking of illness, I think I hear my patient calling,” I said. I’d left the front door slightly ajar, and walked in to find Emory, already halfway down the stairs, demanding to know where his dinner was.
I sometimes wonder whether the melancholy moods Emory suffered during his illness when he wasn’t vacillating toward the other extreme, cursing and yelling, were not harbingers of things to come. Soon after he was up and around again, we were in for another blow.
One day in mid-January of 1916, a train chugged peacefully along a track fifty miles outside of Chihuahua City. Its main cargo included mining supplies for ASARCO mines, and a large sum of money sent by one mining concern to the suffering natives in the Chihuahua mining country. Also aboard were a group of mining men.
Along the route, the train was halted by a group of Villista forces, who emptied it of its American passengers—eighteen or so men—stripped them of their clothing, lined them up like feed sacks against the railroad cars, and opened fire on them. One man managed to escape from the impromptu execution, and fled across the sharp cactus and stones of the god-forsaken desert terrain back to Chihuahua City, where he arrived badly injured and bleeding profusely. By a stroke of kind fate, he was met by a group of friendly Mexicans who cared for him.
His report of what had happened was soon to blacken the headlines of the American press, and cause outrage in Washington. I had been told that Villa in defeat could be as bloodthirsty and cruel as he was magnanimous and friendly in victory.
But for the sporadic wire service between San Antonio and Mexico, we would have known before we read the newspapers that Ralph Jones was not among those killed. Yet because Emory believed he might be, we spent two very long days agonizing over the matter. Conditions in Chihuahua territory had been so dangerous that a good many of the mining men had been out of there for some weeks, and now, under the assurance by Carranza that they could safely return, many of them were going back to work.
Although I thought the miners were a bit dense for failing to listen to the cautions later added by Carranza agents that Villistas were in the immediate area and they ought to stay out for the time being, I was as frightened as Emory that Ralph might be on that coach. He was known to have been near there picking up supplies, and could easily have taken that train. After two days of conflicting reports as to the number of men killed and their names, and a frustrating attempt at getting information from closer to the site, which had Emory pacing the floor in his nightshirt and sending thunderous clouds of cigar smoke into the air, while Nathan was dispatched to send telegrams to every possible address where Ralph might be, were he safe, we received the wire confirming he was in El Paso. All of us breathed a sigh of relief. Unfortunately, the relief was not to last.
Several nights later we got word Ralph had been killed in a knife fight in El Paso. I couldn’t believe it was all happening as I packed a suitcase for Emory before daybreak. Still pale from his illness, he hurriedly dressed for the trip to the border town. Nathan, roused from his sleep, dressed and went out to warm up the automobile while I fried bacon and eggs and made coffee. I was too shocked to react. Only hours earlier, Emory had gotten a wire from Ralph’s parents, who lived in Michigan, thanking him for the wire he’d sent them several days previous, with the message, “I trust you have been notified of your son’s safety.” The exchange between them had astonished me, and brought to mind that side of Emory he kept in check most of the time … that compassion for others which emerged so unexpectedly now and then. I would have looked for Emory to be angry at the loss of a valued employee, but not to have a thought for the feelings of the man’s loved ones.
By midmorning Emory was well on his way and Nathan was at the office. I sat down with the paper and a cup of coffee, looking for an account of the strange and tragic event. I read something of an American man being killed in a bar in El Paso, at the hand of a Mexican, but there were no names mentioned and by that time a new and more formidable news story had largely displaced items of interest to a relative few. General Pershing, in charge of Fort Bliss, had declared martial law in El Paso because of widespread street fighting brought on by the massacre of the train passengers.
Adolph Tetzel had heard the news of Ralph’s death, and stopped by after dinner. It was unusual for him to pay an impromptu call, and I wondered at first how he’d found out about Ralph, before I realized that, of course, Nathan might have told him during the day. He handed me a note with a name and address included on it, and asked it be given to Emory. “I’m leaving town early in the morning. Please see that Cabot gets this name. I think the man might be able to take over operations for him down there. Tell Cabot to contact the man immediately. I’ll return in two weeks,” he said brusquely, then added almost apologetically, “It was a very sad thing about Jones, eh?”
His early appearance with Ralph’s replacement seemed almost cold-blooded, but then that was business, I supposed, and anyway, Tetzel had been very understanding about the reduced production of the past few months, and had extended notes on money borrowed as well as lending more to Emory, until things could get straightened out. It escaped me how anyone could be helped very much by depending upon Mexican copper, especially when in the market for quantities huge enough to make munitions to fight a war, but then I really never was very clear on how much production went on—perhaps more than anyone could have imagined—and I’d heard that lately a Frenchman had paid two and a half million dollars to buy the big El Oro mine in Mexico. I guessed prospects down there must be fairly good for anyone able to hold out a little longer. I shook my head, frustrated by my own ignorance of the situation.
Emory was kept away almost as long as Tetzel. After identifying Ralph’s body, he felt it his duty to accompany it by rail all the way to Michigan, remain long enough for the funeral, then travel back home. When he arrived at mid-day in a taxi, he looked tired and drawn again, and more depressed than I had ever seen him. I gave him Tetzel’s note, which he folded and put into his pocket without reading. “I talked to Ralph’s buddies in El Paso,” he said. “It seems one of his best friends was on that train Villa massacred and since then Ralph had spent most of his time drowning his sorrow in whiskey. He got into a fight with a Mexican one night; the Mexican pulled a knife, and that was the end for him. Damn it, he ought to have known better.”
“Did they get the Mexican?”
“No, he disappeared, a very easy thing to do down there.”
“Why don’t you try and get some rest.”
“I can’t. I’ve got to get right down to the office. I can’t seem to get anything done anymore.”
I watched him walk toward the garage, a beleaguered-looking figure with shoulders a bit more angular than they used to be, his black suit rumpled from the trip
, and hanging more loosely on him than it used to. I thought with a shudder, is the world changing, Emory, or just your luck?
Although Emory did not go into Mexico during the first few months of 1916, he carried on a constant exchange of letters with Barrista, who seemed often to be looking for ways out of the movement the men had begun together. Each time Carranza made some positive attempt at restoring order in the country, or announced some new phase of his reconstruction plans, Barrista would write about it.
His white stationery was like an ebbing flag in Emory’s hand, as he read the messages again and again, then fired back with six new reasons why they should go on with the Plan de Pacifica Reforma. I sometimes felt sorry for Barrista. He was so tired of the bloodshed of his countrymen, so weary of the separation from his daughter—he could not bring Aegina back until he was assured of her safety—that he was willing to compromise if Carranza could do the job even half as well as he himself could have done. He often reminded Emory that Carranza was stubborn but reasonable, and he was sure that the man would not be so arrogant as to turn the foreign investor out.
One day in February as Emory angrily wadded up a letter from Barrista, he grumbled, “Well, at least his daughter’s got some fight in her.”
“Is that so?” I said, bristling. “And what does she do that’s so important to the revolution?”
“She writes literature, for one thing. Her essays tell young people about the educational opportunities promised.”
“And her writings are circulated across the border?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to meet her sometime.”
“She wouldn’t interest you.”
“She interests you, no doubt.”
He smiled and put a hand under my chin. “Something tells me you are a little jealous.” I looked away. “Why do you hide things so? You didn’t always do that. You’re getting very matronly, Electra.”
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