Last Train From Cuernavaca

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  “I’m not a captain.” Angel broke free and reined her mare in circles to avoid those desperate hands. “Go back to your village.”

  “They burned my village, Capitán.” The woman was determined to promote Angel in rank. “They killed my parents. I have not eaten in two days.” The young woman sank to her knees in the dust and held her hands up in supplication. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Please take me with you.”

  “Go with Manuel.” Angel nodded toward the former member of the rurales. “He has no one to warm his blankets, and he won’t mistreat you.”

  The woman didn’t have to look higher than Angel’s beautifully tooled saddle to see that the handsome young rebel was closer to aristocracy than anyone else. She must have assessed every traveler who stopped at the fountain. Angel wasn’t flattered to have been selected.

  “I want to be your woman, Capitán.”

  “If Manuel accepts you, you may accompany us.”

  “I don’t want to go with him. I want to go with you.”

  Plinio leaned forward in his saddle. “One who disdains a gift insults God, my daughter.”

  Angel left the woman to work out an arrangement with Manuel. She reminded Angel of a younger version of her mother. Angel hadn’t prayed since the day she found her father’s workers dead in the dried up irrigation ditch. She prayed now that her mother would return from wherever el gobierno had sent her. She prayed that people had been kind to her, but she didn’t think it likely.

  24

  The Eye of the Storm

  Rico knew that Mexico City’s main newspaper, El Imparcial, The Impartial, was laughably misnamed. Porfirio Díaz had backed El Imparcial for the thirty years he held power and it still occupied a comfortable position in the back pocket of big business. But Rico’s grandfather had received it by courier every week and Rico had learned to read with it.

  He wasn’t surprised that El Imparcial claimed Victoriano Huerta had nothing to do with the deaths of Francisco Madero, his brother, and the vice president. The president himself had entrusted the general with quelling the coup attempt, El Imparcial said. And besides, General Huerta was visiting with the Dutch ambassador when President Madero was shot.

  Rico wanted to believe that Victoriano Huerta hadn’t ordered Francisco Madero’s assassination. Almost everyone of influence seemed to believe him. When Huerta took over as president pro tem, diplomats of every embassy came calling to congratulate him. Foreign investors expressed their pleasure at having a forceful leader in control again. The military hierarchy hadn’t protested. The only government leader who refused to recognize Huerta’s authority was Venustiano Carranza, governor of the northern state of Coahuila. And he lived too far away to matter.

  Rico had taken a weekend pass to the capital to see how it fared. The charred corpses had disappeared from the streets, along with the cartridge casings and unexploded artillery shells. Workmen were repairing the damage done to the buildings. Electricity had been restored.

  Rico shouldn’t have been surprised by how quickly his people seemed to have erased from their memories the image of the dead bodies of men, women, and children, slaughtered by their own government. Maybe their history of thousands of years of violence had habituated them to it.

  Only in Mexico, Rico thought, could such a senseless bloodbath be nicknamed a Fiesta of Bullets.

  Before Rico returned to duty at Tres Marías a week ago, he suggested that Grace throw a fiesta of her own to celebrate the coming of Lent. He figured it would cheer her up and take her mind off the uncertainty in the capital. He had not experienced one of Grace’s full-throttle extravaganzas, so he could not have imagined she and her friends among the officers’ wives would organize something like this. The crowd of officers gathered in front of Cuernavaca’s elegant theater should have tipped him off.

  When Rico and Juan entered the theater, a flock of young women surrounded them and jostled to break eggs on their heads. Fortunately María and the Colonial’s kitchen maids had poked holes in each end of the eggs and had blown out the original contents, leaving only the shells. Unfortunately they had filled the shells with cheap cologne and bits of gold and silver paper.

  Being pelted with eggs was customary at pre-Lent celebrations, so Rico and Juan had worn their oldest dress uniforms. They both bowed and moved away from the door to give the ladies a clear shot at the next guests.

  Juan stopped to stare around the room. “¡Que maravilloso!” And Juan wasn’t one to use words like “marvelous.”

  The theater was another of Porfirio Díaz’s monuments to progress and to himself. It would have looked at ease in Paris or Rome. Frescoes crusted its domed ceiling. Red velvet swags decorated the curved tiers of balconies and loge seats. It looked posh enough as it was, but Grace and her staff and her friends had turned it into a fairyland.

  The seats formed a line against the walls to make room for dancing. A long buffet and smaller tables sat in a jungle of potted palms a-twinkle with small lights. A soft glow from Japanese lanterns illuminated the room. The parquet floor glittered with the gold and silver confetti that had fallen off the guests. Baskets contained brightly colored paper fans and parasols as gifts. Women were already using them to flirt with the men.

  Luís, the Colonial’s cantinero, presided at a bar set up in a side room. Rico was pleased to see him. The success of the surprise he had planned would depend on people drinking enough to lose their inhibitions.

  Cuernavaca’s social set was not large. Everyone knew each other so conversation was lively. They all wanted to forget, at least for tonight, the troubles in the capital. Besides, during Carnival they all had a duty to enjoy themselves.

  Rico found Grace and whirled her around. He gave her a feather-down kiss that was more satisfying than a buss and a bear hug. It was a kiss of friendship and comfort. It was an optimistic kiss. It implied they would have the rest of their lives to enjoy more passionate embraces.

  It also transferred confetti from Rico’s lips to hers. He brushed it off with the tips of his fingers, then gathered her into his arms. She leaned against him as if coming home.

  The band started with the usual Mexican danzas and two-steps. As the barrel in the bar filled with empty bottles, the laughter grew louder and the music livelier. By midnight Rico and Grace and all the other couples were dancing the tango. Rico gauged that the time had come for him to introduce his surprise.

  He didn’t doubt that people would like the Turkey Trot. The Vatican had denounced it with indignation. That alone would assure its popularity.

  Rico had mailed a musical arrangement to the bandmaster a few days before. As the musicians launched into an exuberant rendition of “Stop-time Rag,” Rico grabbed Grace by the waist and pulled her close to demonstrate the “hugging” that had so offended the Pope.

  Rico and Grace had danced together so often to the phonograph that she caught on quickly to the basic moves. Four alternating hops—left, right, left, right—with feet wide apart. Up on the ball of the foot, and landing on the heel. Once Grace had the rhythm, Rico added fast kicks between her legs and the sudden stops and turns that made the dance fun and alarming.

  Before Rico and Grace finished the first circuit of the floor, the whole company took off at a gallop that was more free-for-all than dance. As Rico steered Grace through the happy mêlée, she threw her head back and laughed.

  Rico wanted to believe that as long as they were dancing, nothing bad could happen. Tomorrow he would have to tell Grace he had been assigned to Veracruz for six weeks. Rumor had it that Huerta intended to install Rubio, a general now, as governor of Morelos. The good news was that Rubio liked Grace and would make sure nothing happened to the Colonial. But Rico wondered if Rubio was sending him away because he planned a campaign he knew Rico would protest.

  Much as Rico disliked Rubio, he hated Emiliano Zapata more. He remembered the view from the high ridge at Tres Marías, the blight of black patches that once had been productive fields and lovely old houses.
Rico knew the names of every one of those haciendas—El Rosario, Los Arboles, Santa Fe. He knew the families who had lived behind their vine-covered walls. Zapata had to be stopped before he destroyed not only Morelos’s economy, but its history and tradition. Huerta was a brute, but maybe Mexico needed him.

  Still, Rico couldn’t shake the feeling that the country was holding its breath, waiting for the rest of the tempest to arrive with a roar.

  25

  Rains of Terror

  “El gobierno attacked before dawn.” José’s hands shook as he reached for the canteen Angel held out. He took a long drink from it before he went on with his story. “They went from one house to another, shooting what ever moved.”

  “How did you escape, Papá?” asked Antonio.

  José glanced at his wife, Serafina, sitting nearby with a blanket draped around her shoulders. She rocked back and forth, crying silently. “Your mother and I have not slept inside the house since General Fatso returned to Morelos.”

  “General?”

  “Rubio is a general now.” José continued his account. “Every night we unroll our mats in el corral, the courtyard. When we heard the shooting, we ran out the back gate and hid like mice in the cornfield. We saw black smoke rising from the village.”

  “Did they take the women?” Angel asked.

  José stared at the ground. His answer was barely audible. “I don’t know.”

  It was a question none of the men would have bothered to ask because they knew the answer. Of course, the federales took the women. When the army was through with them they would send them to labor camps in a jungle so far away the forest canopy might as well shade the muck of another continent. The only way to save all the women was to drive los federales out of Morelos and General Huerta from the President’s Palace.

  Angel had a more immediate plan, although “plan” might be too ambitious a name for it.

  “We will hunt down the curs and free the women.”

  Angel could tell by the looks on their faces that no one liked the idea. Even Antonio shook his head.

  Angel couldn’t believe it. “¡Carajo! You let them defile our women and yet you pretend to be men?”

  “If we attack the federales they will shoot the captives,” said Antonio. “And Colonel Contreras would not approve such a raid.”

  At least the men looked chagrined as they skulked back to their off-duty pastimes. Angel spat in their direction, then stalked away to perch on a boulder and brood. She stared at the dark clouds massing over the mountains in the direction of the Capital. She was so preoccupied she didn’t remember that the rains weren’t supposed to come for two more weeks.

  She gave a start at the sound of Plinio’s voice behind her.

  “Trying to rescue those captives will not return your mother to you, my child.”

  “Quien de los suyos se aleja, Dios lo deja,” said Angel. “He who leaves his family is forsaken by God.”

  “Then God has forsaken most of us, for we are truly orphans.”

  “Mexico is our mother. These mountains are our casitas, our little houses.” Angel scooped up a fistful of dry, rocky soil and shook it at him. “This dirt is our soul.”

  “I pray you are right, my daughter. I pray God has not forsaken the handfuls of dirt that are our souls.” When he walked away, his shoulders slumped as if still bearing the eighty pounds of sugarcane he had carried on his back most of his life.

  Angel decided to ride to San Miguel and track the federales to wherever they were keeping the women. Then maybe she could convince her comrades to rescue them. Her plan involved leaving camp without permission, but she would take that up with Contreras when she returned. She had never tried to take advantage of the fact that her commanding officer was her father’s old friend, but she would this time.

  Even if she couldn’t locate the captives, a trip to San Miguel could be useful. Maybe the soldiers’ ravening horde of galletas, the camp followers, had overlooked some caches of corn or beans. And if el gobierno had burned the houses and corn cribs, Fatso’s troops would not likely return there. The caves in the cliff face below the village would be safe. They would provide shelter from the rains.

  In the distance, thunder rumbled approval of her plan.

  From the balcony above the Colonial’s wide entryway Grace watched lightning flick like snakes’ tongues at the mountain peaks near Tres Marías. She could count on two facts of life in Mexico. The tabachine trees would adorn themselves with flame-red flowers in March and the annual rains would arrive in May. So why was an escort of dark clouds mustering in mid-April?

  Their color, like tarnished gunmetal, matched Grace’s mood. Two factors fueled her gloom. One was Rico’s absence. The other was Rubio’s presence.

  Rubio had arrived in Cuernavaca much puffed up over his double promotion to general and governor. General Huerta must have learned an important lesson from his former boss, Porfirio Díaz: promote incompetents. Bumblers rarely staged successful coup attempts. Porfirio’s cousin Felix had recently proven that.

  Rubio spent a lot of time with his troops in the field, for which Grace was grateful. But when he came to town he passed more of his waking hours at the Colonial than in the pink stone hulk called the Governor’s Palace. He claimed he came here for María’s spicey stewed plums and the piano music, but Grace had seen him staring at José’s daughter, Socorro. She kept the girl busy in the kitchen whenever his brass-bedizened bulk darkened the hotel’s doorway.

  Grace had nicknamed José’s daughter Cora, but the child was so silent and sylph-like that Lyda called her The Wraith. The only time Grace heard her laugh or speak above a murmur was when she and Annie had their heads together. Because of her friendship with Cora, Annie was becoming fluent in Nahuatl.

  Grace envied Annie’s ease with languages. She considered Nahuatl, and not the digestive distress known as the trots, to be Moctezuma’s real revenge. She suspected the Aztecs had designed their talk to trip up the tongue, not trip off it, but she loved to hear her employees converse, their voices as soft and mysterious as black velvet.

  Mrs. Fitz-Goring’s voice was neither soft nor mysterious. It erupted from the dining hall below the balcony.

  “Stupid girl!”

  “Bollocks,” Grace muttered. Rubio, the spring rains, and now Fitz-Goring. What vengeful Aztec deity had she offended to bring all this down on her head?

  Grace headed for the dining hall at her emergency gait. She had had the seamstress sew gored panels into her skirts to allow more movement. An unfashionably long hemline hid the walk that to casual observers looked regal. Each stride, however, swallowed two stair steps or covered a meter of the Colonial’s tile-paved corridors.

  She found Mrs. Fitz-Goring standing like a monument to umbrage in the middle of the crowded dining room. Socorro stared up at her, as wide-eyed as a rabbit hypnotized by a cobra. Grace gently grasped the girl’s shoulders and turned her toward the kitchen.

  She reassured her with one of the few phrases she knew in Nahuatl, “Ca ye cualli. It’s all right,” and gave her a nudge to set her in motion. Then she faced the wrath of the dowager du jour.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Fitz-Goring. What seems to be the problem?”

  “It’s not what seems to be the problem, Mrs. Knight. It’s what is the problem.” The dewlaps on each side of Mrs. Fitz-Goring’s jaw quivered with indignation. They quivered so often that Wattles had become her nickname in the kitchen and back hallways.

  “That clumsy girl spilled hot tea on me. She scalded me and ruined my gown.”

  Try as she might, Grace could see no evidence of tea on the dress, but saying so wouldn’t help matters. “Bring the frock to Lyda tomorrow and she will see that it is laundered. And of course your dinner this evening will be complimentary.”

  “Your girls won’t be scrubbing my new charmeuse on a rock in some filthy river, will they?”

  “I assure you we have a proper laundry.”

  Wattles looked unconvinced. “Spi
gs are so lazy, it’s a wonder you coax any work at all from them, Mrs. Knight.”

  Grace lowered her voice so as not to create more of a scene by chastising a guest. She also had discovered that in situations like these the more quietly she spoke the more closely people listened. It was as if she were sharing a secret rather than delivering an ultimatum.

  “What you say in the privacy of your room is your concern, Mrs.

  Fitz-Goring, but we do not allow the word ‘spig’ in the public areas of the Colonial.”

  “What harm in it?” Wattles looked genuinely surprised that Grace would find offense. “It is merely short for ‘No spigga da Eenglis,’ is it not?”

  “Nevertheless, I must ask you to help us maintain standards of decorum.”

  Grace had found that the word “decorum” worked like a charm for most British patrons, at least when they were sober. She waited until Mrs. Fitz-Goring had sat back down on her chair and wedged herself between its sturdy arms, then she left to comfort Cora. Behind her, she could hear Wattles soliciting sympathy from the other diners for the shabby treatment she had received at the hands of help and management. She did not, however, repeat the word “spig.” And Wattles wasn’t likely to get much sympathy anyway. These days, most of the hotel guests were grateful to have a roof over their heads, three meals a day, and no one shooting at them.

  Because Fitz-Goring occupied a room here, Lyda had to turn someone away today. The Mexicans might be able to view coups with a fatalistic fortitude, but not so outsiders. Wattles was one of thousands of foreigners who had come to Cuernavaca to escape the ominous uncertainty in Mexico City. As a result, the Colonial was full to capacity.

  And then there was the army. In the upstairs wing, officers slept on cots, eight to a room. Grace was grateful for the business, but she felt as frayed as the hems of José Perez’s white cotton trousers.

  That reminded her. José was supposed to have brought more pottery two days ago. He never missed a delivery. She would ask Cora about him in the morning. In the meantime, she had to convince the poor child that she had done nothing wrong and Grace was not angry with her in the least.