Last Train From Cuernavaca

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  “Get up, English, or you’ll miss the train.”

  Train? What train? Exhaustion and predawn darkness conspired to confuse Grace about where she was and what language she was hearing. She could think of only one person with the nerve to come into her room and wake her.

  “Sod off, Lyda.”

  Her bones creaked when she shifted on the iron seat. The pain in her joints was the first hint that she wasn’t in her bed in the Colonial. She jacked one eye open and tried to focus on her torturer. That only deepened her confusion. The face and voice were familiar but not the outfit.

  Lieutenant Angel wore a long, white cotton skirt, freshly laundered and starched, but with creases from where it had been folded. A wide flounce decorated the bottom of it. Its clean, crisp condition was enough to identify it as part of the new loot. The lieutenant had folded a large scarf in half diagonally and tied it at a rakish angle at his waist. A shawl covered his short, touseled hair. The cords that gathered the open neck of his calico blouse were loosely tied, exposing an inch of cleft between two small breasts.

  Grace sat up and stared. The lieutenant had breasts.

  “Angel?”

  “Some call me Angel. Some call me a devil.” Angel rapped the sole of Grace’s foot again with his riding crop. Her riding crop?

  “Hurry up.”

  Grace put on her sandals, got to her feet, and folded her blanket as automatically as if still asleep. She clasped the blanket to her chest and swayed like a sapling in a wind while Serafina saddled Moses. Fina put several tamales wrapped in banana leaves into the flour sack and tied it to the pommel.

  Grace finally woke up enough to realize she was going home.

  “Please return this to the nuns.” She handed Serafina the blanket. “Do you remember the incantation against los aires?”

  “Yes, Mamacita, I remember.”

  Grace turned to Angel who, she had to admit, made a very beautiful woman. She supposed she would find out the lieutenant’s story on the ride to Tres Marías.

  “I have taught Señora Perez the words to chase away evil spirits. She can make the water safe wherever you camp.”

  “Bueno.” The lieutenant hiked up her skirt, swung into the saddle, and reined the mare into a tight turn. When she said “Vámanos” she was already heading away.

  Grace should have been elated about leaving, but she realized she might never see Serafina again. She put her arms around her and the two held each other as if to defy fate to separate them.

  “Ma xipatinemi,” Grace said. “May you be well.”

  “And may you also be well, Mamacita,” she added in a lower voice. “And may you find your handsome captain.”

  Grace mounted Moses and rode after Angel as the camp’s early risers began to stir. She dozed in the saddle for the first few miles. When the sun rose, she woke up enough to take deep breaths, inhaling the fragrance of the stand of tall cedar trees all around her. The birds seemed giddy with joy at the prospect of a sunny morning in the rainy season. Grace understood how they felt.

  When she and Angel left the forest, she saw that the dome of the dawn sky blazed with oranges and purples, crimson and golds. In the distance the valley’s ring of lavender mountains floated on a sea of mist. Her countrymen might go on, and on, about the beauty of the English countryside, but it could not compare with Mexico.

  Grace decided the time had come to ask some questions. She glanced over at the slender, long-legged young woman who rode astride with her skirt hiked above her knees.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Angela. I am the daughter of Petra Cordero and Miguel Sanchez y Solís.”

  Grace chuckled. This explained her glimpse of Lieutenant Angel entwined, naked, with Antonio.

  Angel glared at her. “Is my name a joke?”

  “No, of course not.” But Grace kept smiling. Even in the midst of war, love could find a way. She wondered if love would find a way for her and Rico. “Why do you dress as a man?”

  “Why do you?”

  “You know why I wear trousers, but I don’t know why you do.”

  Angel didn’t answer and Grace thought maybe she had asked one too many questions. She expected the answer to this one to be the Spanish equivalent of “None of your business.”

  Finally, Angel spoke. “General Rubio’s dog-shit soldiers burned our house. They murdered my father’s workers in the field. They threw their bodies into a ditch. I saw them do it. Only Antonio lived. Plinio and the others arrived after the soldiers left.”

  “When did that happen?” Grace didn’t want to hear that Rico had been one of those soldiers, but neither could she bear not knowing.

  “Six or seven months ago.”

  “December? November?”

  “Near the end of November.”

  Grace released the breath she had been holding. She remembered with crystal clarity the date and almost the exact time when he first held her hand lightly in his palm and kissed her fingers. And from that night on he had entertained the topers in the Colonial’s bar every night. Grace realized, with a start, that he must have been trying to get her attention with all that silliness.

  Grace returned to the task of unraveling the mystery of Lieutenant Angel. “Where are your parents?”

  “They fled. Colonel Contreras told me that my father rides with Pancho Villa in the north. He’s a general now.”

  “Don’t you want to see him?”

  “Villa is a good general, but a bad man. I would rather pledge my loyalty to General Zapata. Zapata is a true revolutionary. He’s the only general who cares for the people.”

  Grace had to admit Angel was probably right.

  “And your mother”

  “I pray she is with my father. Or with God.”

  Grace silently seconded that. A peasant woman’s alternatives to being safe or being dead were too terrible to contemplate.

  “I am not a religious person,” said Angel. “I do not go to church to whine to God and beg for favors. I do not try to bribe Him with candles and centavos in the poor box. But I tell you this, English, I pray to Him every day that General Fatso waddles into my gun sights.

  “I want to hold my pistol this close to his face…” She held her hands a foot or so apart “…and pull the trigger so his brains spray out the back of his head. If God disapproves of that plan, then I will stroll contentedly into hell. I will greet with abrazos the friends who arrived before me.”

  They stopped at a village and left the mare and Moses with a family Angel seemed to know well. Angel dug into her saddlebag and held out a dress for Grace, but she refused again. The two of them walked to the main road and Angel pointed down it.

  “Tres Marías is a mile or two away.”

  Grace assumed the lieutenant would send her off with a wave and an airy “Hasta la vista.” Instead, Angel set out on foot at her side. She did not hesitate when the tile roofs of the army’s adobe barracks came into view.

  “Are you crazy, Angela?”

  “Without doubt.” Angel grinned at her.

  “El gobierno will hang you if they catch you. Or worse.”

  “And you, do you plan to live forever, English?”

  “I don’t go looking for trouble.”

  “Weren’t you looking for trouble when you went to San Miguel that day?”

  “I was looking for vases.”

  “To sell to your gringo tourists with their skin like fish bellies.”

  Grace let that pass. “Will you take the train to Cuernavaca?”

  “No. We orphans will ride into Cuauhnáhuac soon enough. Today I’ll stir myself in with el gobierno’s whores like a jalapeño into weasel stew and see what I can learn.”

  Angel strolled toward the station as casually as she claimed she would enter hell. The thought occurred to Grace that Angel had planned from the start to use her as cover. Who would suspect a young woman traveling with Señora Knight, proprietor of the Hotel Colonial, friend of martyred Francisco Madero, and acqu
aintance of President Huerta and General Rubio?

  That should have annoyed Grace instead of amusing her. She felt a rush of affection for the brash young rascal she had known as Lieutenant Angel.

  “Take care of Moses, Señorita Sanchez.”

  “I will.” Angel raised a hand in good-bye. “May you be well.”

  Grace watched her stride, slender hips swaying, toward the sprawling encampment of the federal army’s women.

  Grace removed her torn, sweat-stained straw sombrero and shied it off the edge of the cliff. It sailed away like a condor on a thermal. She untied the straw cord that held her braid. She shook her hair to set it loose, then ran her fingers through it to restore some order. She laughed and heard an echo of her laughter from the canyon below.

  “I am going home!” she shouted.

  “Home,” the canyon answered.

  “Home, home, home,” added the echo.

  39

  Riding in the Zulu Car

  “Señora Knight!”

  Grace turned to see Rico’s friend Juan hurrying toward her. After weeks of wandering lost in the mountains, the familiarity of Tres María’s shabby train station disoriented her. She was too distracted to notice the look of astonishment that flashed across Juan’s face, or the glint of guile that replaced it.

  Juan bowed, then snapped erect and clicked the glossy heels of his boots. He grasped her elbow and steered her toward the train platform, talking all the while in his haphazard mix of Spanish and English.

  When he paused to take a breath Grace asked, “Where is Captain Martín?”

  “He go Cuernavaca. Three, quizas four day past.”

  Grace’s heart did a little quick-step bounce with a whirl and a dip thrown in. Rico was in Cuernavaca. In a few hours she would feel his arms around her. She would dance with him to the music of the phonograph he had given her in what seemed another lifetime.

  She hoped Juan hadn’t noticed how red her cheeks were at the thought of what she and Rico would do in the welcoming darkness of her rooms.

  “What is today?” she asked.

  “Sábado.”

  “What day of the month?”

  “Thirty Mayo.”

  May thirtieth. Grace had spent more time on the run with Lieutenant Angel’s rebels than she realized.

  “Are the trains still running?”

  “Yes, Mamacita. You have suerte. See! Now it comes.” He pointed to a puff of smoke in the distance.

  He excused himself with another bow and rushed off to the ticket counter. He shoved to the head of the line and hustled back waving the rectangle of pasteboard that would carry her home. Such a beautiful bit of pasteboard it was, the color of old ivory embellished with crimson curlicues. Her destination, Cuernavaca, was stamped in bold red letters across the center of it.

  “I have no money with me, Captain, but I can pay you later.”

  He dismissed such an insignificant debt with a wave of the hand. “Me alegre to do for you.”

  As the train slowed, Lyda and Annie leaned out a window of the first-class coach. They screamed so loudly they drowned out the engine’s steam whistle. They pelted down the steps before the car came to a complete stop. They danced Grace around the platform, then Lyda grabbed her in what she always referred to as a bear hug.

  “Thank God,” she sobbed. “We thought those brutos indios had killed and barbecued you.”

  The three of them stayed locked in each other’s arms until the conductor shouted “All aboard.” As Grace followed Lyda and Annie to the steps to the coach she noticed the four guards sitting in a roofless box car with slits cut in the sides for their rifles. From the wood smoke floating through the slits they must have been cooking breakfast. Grace wondered if her friends would be attacking the train today.

  She climbed the steps and did not glance back. She did not see the look of relief on Juan’s face as the train pulled away. She did not see the dark silhouette of the Gonzales boy against the pale gray sky, his body swinging gently in the wind.

  Nor did she remember what Angel had said.

  “We orphans will ride into Cuauhnáhuac soon enough.”

  The first-class coach, with its shabby, broken seats, sagging luggage racks, and the lavatory closet containing one overflowing thundermug, looked mighty good to Grace. More passengers came aboard at Tres Marías creating an superabundance of baggage and humanity.

  Lyda stood in the doorway and muttered, “A Zulu car. That’s what this is.”

  Grace thought that if she asked Lyda questions, she could delay Lyda asking them of her. “What’s a Zulu car?”

  “It’s a name people give to the westbound immigrant trains in the States. Entire families set up house keeping in those cars. Babies are born there, and old people sometimes depart this mortal coil in them.”

  Grace made her way among the colorful clusters of indios camped in the aisle and on the seats. The smell of roasted meat made the stale, soot-laden air almost aromatic. Besides cooking on their small braziers, they slept, drank, gossiped, smoked cigars, played cards, and sang lullabyes to their babies. They looked, in fact, very much like Angel’s band in camp. Grace felt at ease among them.

  She had to acknowledge that the indios’ reasoning was more logical than an Englishman’s. They would agree with Spinoza that nature abhors a vacuum. If a dearth of first-class passengers left seats empty, then the third-class passengers had the right to fill them.

  Lyda arrived at the four seats she had reserved, and paid the boy she had hired to guard the belongings sitting on them. She and Annie cleared away some of the sacks and packages to make room for Grace to sit.

  As soon as Grace sank into the seat facing them, they leaned forward, elbows on knees in that undignified American way. They looked ready to light off questions like strings of firecrackers.

  Grace held up both hands to stop them. “First tell me this, is Rico in Cuernavaca?”

  “No, Gracie.” When Lyda shook her head her blond curls bounced around her neck. Grace realized that she hadn’t seen yellow hair in over a month. “Rico went looking for you, then he disappeared, too. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of him for two weeks or more.”

  “Juan said he went to Cuernavaca three or four days ago.”

  “Well, I expect he’s there then. We’ve been shopping in Mex City since Monday, and the rebs cut the phone lines again.”

  “And the Colonial?”

  “So few guests have come, I had to let most of the staff go.”

  “María and Socrates? Socorro?”

  “I kept them on, along with the gardner, Leobardo, a few of the maids, and the Chinaman, but they haven’t been paid. To tell you the truth, Gracie, I was going to shut the place down when Annie and I got back.”

  Grace was horrified. “Shut it down?”

  Tears welled up in Lyda’s eyes. “We thought you were dead, darlin’.”

  Annie couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. “Did you stay with the rebels, Auntie Grace?” she asked. “Did you meet General Zapata? Did you fight in any battles? Did you get those clothes off a dead man?”

  Grace should have known that people would ask her these sorts of questions, but she wasn’t prepared for them. At least the first ones to interrogate her were her dearest friends. How would she respond when General Rubio demanded answers? And what if something she said now made its way back to him? She couldn’t bear the thought of her own careless words causing el gobierno to find Lieutenant Angel’s people and murder them.

  She knew she was not capable of lying to Lyda and Annie, but she couldn’t tell them the whole truth either. She closed her eyes and pretended to fall asleep while Lyda kept up a stream of gossip about the goings-on in the capital and Cuernavaca in her absence.

  Actually, Grace didn’t have to pretend to sleep. Exhaustion sat as stone-heavy as gargoyles on her brow. The car swayed and rattled. The walls creaked like arthritic knee joints.

  In the past, the swaying and noise had bothered Grace,
but now they were the rocking of a cradle and a lullabye. She fell asleep to them, and to the sound of Lyda’s voice. The crooning of a mother nursing her baby in the aisle nearby was a sweet and familiar comfort.

  40

  The Truth and Anything but the Truth

  Juan crossed his arms and lounged against the wall of the ticket booth until the caboose vanished around the first curve. He lit a cigar and puffed on it while he watched the fluffy burps from the smokestack getting smaller, like Indian signals indicating that the coast was clear. He did not leave the station until he was sure the gringa had truly gone. Gone but not, as Ambrozio Nuñez had led him and Rico to believe, departed.

  He knew the train might stop and back up. It had happened before when Hanibal the engineer had forgotten to remind his Tres Marías sweetheart that she was his true love. Hanibal had a true love at every depot, which was one of many reasons the train arrived late so often.

  Juan didn’t feel guilty about letting Mamacita Knight think Rico was waiting for her in Cuernavaca. But then, guilt rarely bothered Juan. “Consciences…,” he said, when alcohol made him philosophical, “…are for people who don’t know how to enjoy the lives God gave them.”

  Nor would he hesitate to keep his friend in the dark about the fact that the rebels had not thrown Inglesa off a cliff. The woman had caused Rico trouble enough already. If he knew she had returned to the Colonial the fool would waltz right back into Rubio’s snake pit after her. Not that he was much safer anywhere else.

  A friend like Federico Martín was a rare find. Juan had been drawn to him because of his charm, his pranks, his powerful family, and his money. But when tested in combat Rico proved to be much more than the spoiled, womanizing only grandson of Old Man Martín. Beyond that, Juan had come to think of himself as a better man because Rico thought he was.

  Juan had read Rubio’s cable as it came in last night. The telegraph key had transmuted its rat-a-tat-tat into a death sentence for Juan’s dearest friend, maybe the only person in the world he truly loved. The telegram ordered every man in Rubio’s command to forget their other assignments and hunt for Captain Federico Martín. It warned that Martín was a violent criminal who had attacked a superior officer without provocation. It advised anyone who encountered him to shoot on sight.