36
Condemned to Live
Rico’s grandfather was berating him, which was odd. Don Bonifacio rarely scolded him, not because Rico was a well-behaved child—he wasn’t—but because a look from the Old Man served as reprimand enough. Odder still, for once Rico couldn’t think of anything he’d done to deserve a scolding, yet the tirade went on.
He opened his eyes and rubbed his elbow and arm, numb from the weight of his body leaning on his shoulder. His heartbeat marked the passing of several seconds while he tried to get his bearings in the darkness. He squinted at the bars silhouetted in the languid light of the candle stubs guttering in niches in the hall and remembered where he was.
The angry voice that he had woven into his dream came from the guardroom. Maybe Rubio had become drunk enough to decide not to wait for daylight. Maybe the thought had occurred to him that murder was most wisely done in the dark.
Footsteps approached in the hall. Rico took a position at the center of the cell’s back wall. He rolled up his sleeves and bounced lightly on the balls of his feet like a boxer. He sucked in a lungful of the fetid air that expanded, solid as armor plate, inside his chest.
He figured if he put up enough of a fight they would shoot him now and spare him the humiliation of a hanging. He smiled at how angry that would make Rubio. If Rubio knew that by murdering Rico he was sending him to meet his beloved he would be even more furious.
Rico was still smiling at the prospect of a good brawl when four shadowy figures gathered outside the door. One of them rattled an iron key, big as a jaguar’s femur, into the lock. The door swung open. The man who walked through it wore a peasant’s hat whose cantilevered brim threw an opaque shadow across his face.
“Captain, come quickly,” said the hat.
“Who are you?”
“José Perez.”
“Socorro’s father?”
“Yes.”
Even though Rubio had attacked José’s daughter, the soft-spoken, mild-eyed potter was the last person Rico expected to see here in the lion’s den.
“We must hurry, Captain.”
José held a torch high, and Rico hurried after him through the maze of corridors that led deeper into the prison. As Rico passed a cell at the rear of the building he saw two guards inside. They were tied up, gagged, naked, and unhappy.
José used one of the keys to open a side door and Rico breathed in the night air, perfumed with the flowers that filled Cuernavaca in every season. The three other men each grasped José’s hand, arm, and shoulder in a quick embrace, then hurried off around a corner and out of sight.
A small figure waited in the shadows with a pale horse and a grizzled mule. The horse and the boy’s white cotton trousers and shirt gave off a ghostly glow in the moonlight. José and Rico followed him down a side street lit by a single, sputtering street light. When the boy handed Rico the horse’s reins he recognized her face under the hat.
“Socorro!”
“May God, the Holy Virgin, and all the saints bless you, Captain.”
Rico looked at the white horse. The street lamp’s dim light outlined the hammock-curve of his spine under the clumsy wooden burlesque of a saddle. This was not an animal he would ride if his life depended on it.
José was apologetic. “They will not look for you on this creature.”
Rico did not say, “They will not find me on this creature,” but he thought it.
“I thank you, maestro, but my horse is in the Colonial’s stable.”
“Maybe he is there. Maybe he is not.”
“Rubio?” The thought of Rubio in possession of Grullo made him angrier than the general throwing him into jail and plotting his execution.
“Tonight he was bragging in his favorite whore house that he had acquired Don Bonifacio’s famous gray.”
Rico did not ask how José knew what Rubio said in a bordello this evening. José was no fool. He had almost certainly kept track of General Fatso’s whereabouts so he would know when it was safest to come to the jail.
José gave him a satchel made of supple leather. “The general left your pistols in the guardroom strongbox. Before the guards and I had our difference of opinion, they told me he intends to kill you with one of your own guns before sunrise.”
“Even Rubio isn’t stupid enough to think he can get away with murder.”
“Not murder, Captain. Suicide.”
Rico could feel the slender barrels of the Navy Colts inside the sack. He felt the grips, worn to fit not only his hands, but his father’s, grandfather’s, and great grandfather’s. He buckled on the gun belt and returned the Colts to their holster. Now he felt dressed.
“Thank you, Maestro Perez.”
“We tied the guards up tightly. With luck no one will discover them until sunrise. That gives you a five-hour advantage.”
Socorro held out a cotton feed sack. “These are farmer’s clothes, Captain. They are old, but clean and mended.”
Rico started to say he would not need a disguise, then thought better of it. Her eyes pleaded with him to allow her to help him, to pay him back in some small measure, for what he had done for her. He took them with a bow.
He knew that the longer José and his daughter stayed here with him, the more the danger to them.
“And now I shall say good night and pray that God watches over you.”
José took a big key off the ring of them and gave it to Rico. “This will open the side door of the Colonial’s stable.”
“The same key that opened my cell?”
“Yes.” José glanced toward heaven. “God arranges everything.” He held out the reins again. “Take the horse, Captain.”
Rico started to refuse, and José raised a diffident hand ever so slightly, to stop his protest. “If your gray is in the stable, you can leave this one in his place. Imagine the look on Fatso’s face when he finds him there tomorrow.”
Rico chuckled at the image and accepted the reins. As he led the old horse off into the night, Socorro whispered to her father, “Why didn’t you tell him you know where Señora Knight is?”
“Even if General Fatso is mad at him, Captain Martín is still el gobierno, my daughter. He is still the enemy. I could not take him back to Angel’s camp with us, could I?”
“No, Papi.” But tears glistened in Socorro’s moonlit eyes.
Socorro did not speak much in her months working at the Colonial, but she saw a great deal. She knew as well as anyone how much the handsome captain and Señora Knight loved each other.
“What will become of him?” she asked.
“Do not worry about Captain Martín. His grandfather will use his influence to resolve everything for him.”
Just as he always has, José thought.
José knew that Cuernavaca was as dangerous for his daughter and himself as it was for Captain Martín. The two of them mounted the mule and headed out of town. José knew a cave where they could sleep for the rest of the night. At first light tomorrow they would ride to the canyon where José’s wife and the others were camped.
“When you see Mamacita, do not tell her about what happened at the Colonial. Do not tell her we saw her captain.”
“Why not?”
“We have meddled enough with fate tonight. When God wills it, if God wills it, they will find each other.”
37
Loaves and Dresses
Angel hooked a leg over her saddle’s pommel and struck a friction-match on the edge of her boot sole. She held the flame to one of Don Bonifacio Martín’s slender cigars, and sucked on it until the tip glowed like a cat’s eye in firelight. She scowled through the fragrant cloud of its smoke while Antonio rang the bell hanging above the iron grate in the convent door.
The day was almost half over and the men were impatient to return to camp. Angel was, too. The Martín hacienda lay farther away than they had thought. She worried about leaving the women and children alone for three days. And maybe putting the Gonzales boy in charge hadn’t been a
good decision.
She was also annoyed by Antonio’s misguided generosity. She was willing to share their loot with hardworking farmers and laborers. Her men had plenty of it, piled on two pack mules and stuffed into saddlebags. But she was not happy about giving precious food to women who did nothing but pray and loaf around all day. Antonio, however, insisted on it.
“‘Haz bien, y no acates a quien,’” he said, “‘Do good and mind not to whom.’”
“‘Light in the street shouldn’t mean darkness in the house,’” she muttered. “‘Charity begins at home.’”
After a few minutes the wooden panel behind the grate slid open and a woman’s voice said, “Praise be to Jesus.”
Antonio set three sacks by the door. He crossed himself, took off his hat, and held it respectfully to his chest. “We bring provisions for the sisters.”
“God will bless you.”
“Holy Mother, may we water our horses at the well?”
“Of course, my son.” A hand reached out and pulled the sacks inside.
“Antonio?” Serafina’s voice came from somewhere behind the door.
“¿Mamá?”
The door again opened a crack and Serafina edged through it. The others followed her, blinking in the glare of sunlight. La gringa brought up the rear.
Before Angel could ask why the women and children were here, the mother of the Gonzales boy ran toward her shouting, “Lieutenant, where is my son?”
“I told him to keep watch at the river.” Angel’s uneasiness hardened into dread. She did a quick head count and realized that some of her people were missing. “Isn’t he with you?”
“¡Ay Dios! They have killed him.”
The boy’s mother began to wail. She pounded on her chest with her fists, as if to end her torment by stopping the drumbeat of her own heart. Her cries set off three women related to those killed at the river. The din made conversation impossible.
Angel was relieved when Inglesa put an arm around Mrs. Gonzales and walked her, still howling, into the church. The other mourners followed as if in a funeral procession that lacked corpse and coffin. The big door shut behind them and muted the women’s grief enough for Serafina to give an account of the attack at the river.
Angel glanced at Antonio. Señora Gonzales’s instincts about her son were probably right. He might be wandering somewhere on his own, but that was unlikely.
When she had given him his orders, Antonio had raised one eyebrow to signal that he didn’t agree with her decision. Any other man would now have leaped at the chance to say “I told you so,” but he gave no hint of reproach.
Since childhood she had always known that Antonio was like no other member of his gender. Two months ago Colonel Contreras had offered him a lieutenant’s bars and his own company of men. He had declined the honor, choosing instead to keep his sergeant’s stripes. He said he preferred to stay with his father, with Angel, and with his comrades, the fellow workers on her father’s estate.
Angel turned her thoughts to how los federales had found her campsite. Had someone betrayed them? As if he could read her mind Antonio muttered one word, “Nuñez.”
Of course. Nuñez.
Zapata and his officers might destroy the haciendas and mills that provided employment, but they did not not compel anyone to join their forces. Men came and went in the rebel army. Angel hadn’t thought much about Ambrozio Nuñez’s disappearance, but she thought about it now.
Today they would make camp on the plaza. They would distribute chunks of brown sugar to the children. They would feast on the food they had brought from old man Martín’s storerooms. The women would smile when they saw the dresses, shoes, and ruffled scarves, the aromatic lotions and the tortoise shell combs their men brought for them.
Looting was like drinking tequila. Once Angel’s men started despoiling the hacienda they found it hard to stop. As with the unpleasant afteraffects of tequila, Angel might regret the thievery the next morning, but not for long. After all, she and her comrades were helping Don Bonifacio accumulate goodwill in heaven. When had that old reprobate ever made so many poor people as happy as he was about to do now?
Angel decided that tomorrow she would put on some of the stolen finery stowed in her saddlebag. She would go to Tres Marías to learn where Rubio’s men were and what they intended. She would also try to find out if Nuñez had betrayed them.
While she was at it, she might as well take the gringa with her. The woman’s hocus-pocus was useful at bathing and laundry time, but Angel could tell she would never shoot an enemy or share a blanket with an ally. Women who followed the rebel army had to be willing to do one or the other or both. Getting rid of Inglesa would mean one less mouth to feed.
Grace would have preferred to sleep another night in the convent, but now that the men had returned, that wasn’t possible. She could have asked Mother Merced to let her spread her blanket in the parlor again, but that would mean deserting Serafina and the others. She could not bring herself to do it.
Only the Gonzales boy’s mother still grieved, and she had wandered off among the surrounding trees and boulders to do it. The rest of the band set up camp on the plaza where families laid out their blankets to claim very small territories. The children gathered firewood and carried water from the village fountain. Some of the women built hearths of stones while others mixed water with the confiscated cornmeal and patted out tortillas.
Serafina held up a sack of white flour. “Mamacita, how do we do make souls of this?”
Grace knew what she meant by that. The Colonial’s kitchen maids referred to leavened loaves of wheat flour as almas, souls. The name had always amused Grace, but it was apt. Rising dough did seem possessed of a living spirit that transformed a heavy, gummy mass into something light, perfectly formed, moist, and delicious.
She assumed yeast was available even in an abandoned village. It was a byproduct of beer’s fermentation process, and homemade beer was ubiquitous in Mexico. Goat’s milk gone sour, however, was easier to find on short notice. While the other women looked on, Grace showed Serafina how to mix the milk into the flour, knead the dough, cover it with a cloth, and let it rise.
The aroma of the flat loaves baking on hot stones brought back the Colonial’s kitchen in every vivid detail. The longing for home, friends, and most of all, Rico, became unbearable. Grace found a wrought-iron bench in the darkest corner of the plaza and sat down for a long, hard cry.
When she had no tears left, she thought about tomorrow. Serafina said that Tres Marías was not far away. If no one offered to take her there, Grace decided to strike out on her own. She could savor everything about this night with los indios because, one way or another, it would be her last.
She wiped her eyes and blew her nose on one of the big handkerchiefs that were part of Lieutenant Angel’s booty. She had accepted it with misgivings, but she had refused the dress that Angel offered her. She drew the line at wearing stolen clothes. Besides, she had come to prefer the freedom of trousers. The other women were enjoying their new finery though.
As the day’s light faded, Angel’s band built up the fires and wedged torches in the forks of trees. From Grace’s bench in the darkness the bustle in the light of the campfires seemed like theater. She knew her experiences of the past two weeks would make entertaining stories, but she doubted she would tell anyone except Lyda and Annie. She certainly couldn’t tell the officers quartered at the Colonial. And most of her guests would not appreciate the courage, resilience, and poignancy of Lieutenant Angel’s indios. Grace leaned against the curved iron back of the bench and enjoyed the show.
While the women tried on their new finery, the men smoked and played cards, using cartridges as ante. Between hands they swallowed pinches of gunpowder for a taste like salt, and washed them down with the hacendado’s tequila. A few musicians struck up “Valentina” on guitars and a violin. Two or three couples got up to dance.
The villagers must have heard that forty heavily armed rebel
s now occupied the plaza. As night fell they arrived by twos and threes, carrying their meager belongings bundled in bandanas and shawls. Grace wasn’t surprised that Lieutenant Angel invited them to share the bounty. Nor was she surprised when they added their own contributions to the feast. Food often had a way of appearing when Grace would have sworn all the larders were empty.
Five men wearing the torn and faded uniforms of the Federal Army walked slowly onto the plaza. They held their Mausers high and horizontal over their heads to show they intended to surrender. Like most of the army’s northern conscripts they looked hungry. They had no shoes and their rifles were dirty and rusty. Before long they were drinking tequila, playing cards, wagering cartridges, and singing with the rest.
Grace wondered if they had been among the soldiers shooting at her and the others at the river, but no one else seemed bothered by that possibility.
El gobierno’s foot soldiers, with their woebegone black eyes and coffee-with-only-a-hint-of-cream complexions would become indistinguishable from the rebels. In the weeks to come they would acquire sombreros, colorful vests, striped serapes, bandanas, sashes, and the other paraphenalia that made each rebel’s clothes far from uniform.
The past two wakeful nights finally caught up with Grace. She set her sandals side-by-side under the bench. She spread her nun’s blanket on the seat, lay down, and pulled the top half over her. She enjoyed a brief look at the moon and stars twinkling in a cloudless sky beyond the canopy of trees. Then she was aware of nothing more until several raps on the soles of her feet awakened her.
38
“Home! Home! Home!”
“¡Guate!” Grace growled. “Dog shit.”
She drew her knees up, rolled over on her side, and almost fell off the wrought-iron bench. She felt another blow on her foot.
“I said bugger off!”
Whoever had it in for her feet hit them again; quick, light blows that stung nonetheless.
Last Train From Cuernavaca Page 22