Last Train From Cuernavaca

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

  Hunger had become so widespread in Cuernavaca that people stole in order to eat. Now, not only fine horses gazed out of second-story windows, but mules and nags. Tomatoes, squash, and beans, mangoes, avocadoes, oranges, and plums were not safe. To discourage thieves, the gardener had had to cement broken beer bottles along the top of the wall, with their jagged ends up.

  The broken bottles meant that iguanas could no longer lounge on top of it. Grace missed them, basking in the sun with their eyes half-closed. They had accepted chunks of mango from Grace’s fingers as graciously as if they were doing her a favor. She was charmed by how they cocked their heads, like birds, and inspected her before they took the fruit.

  She observed that when they rested, their closed eyelids met at the middle, but when sound asleep the lower lid covered the entire eye. She also learned to recognize the “Glare,” when they turned their heads to focus one eye in a stare meant to intimidate.

  Lyda advised against naming the “gonners,” as she called the iguanas. “Don’t make pets of them,” she said, but Grace did it anyway. Lyda had been right. The broken bottles on the wall allowed Grace to imagine that the gonners had found somewhere else to nap, but she knew better, or worse. Foraging Cuernavacans had almost certainly turned them into soup.

  As Grace stood in the moonlight, sadness swept over her. She wanted to weep for the iguanas, for the starving folk who ate them, and for this Eden of a land. Huerta and Rubio possessed an extraordinarily destructive talent to cause famine in Morelos. The Mexicans had a knack for agriculture, but even if they hadn’t, flowers flourished like weeds here. Crops sprouted so fast Grace could almost see them increasing in height by the hour.

  To lay waste to a country this bountiful, inhabited by people so artistic, resourceful, hardworking, and faithful, was a crime against humanity. A few days ago Jake McGuire had asked Grace if she would pull the triggers on her shotgun. She had said “Yes.” In truth, she would shoot over the head of an intruder, but should she find the generalísimos in her sights, she would aim lower.

  Grace felt among the leaves for new sprouts, but the members of her house hold had picked the garden almost bare. That was why Grace was awake so early. Still holding her cup of tea she headed for the front gate.

  Leobardo and Socrates waited for her with Duke and the hotel mule. The mule was affable enough, but he lacked Moses’s roguish charm. The shotgun’s saddle scabbard was fastened in what Jake McGuire called the northwest position. Jake had taught Socrates to buckle it so it rode horizontally, with the shotgun’s butt pointing forward to make it easy to draw. Grace had the feeling that Socrates imagined himself a cowboy or an outlaw whenever he mounted the mule with the shotgun holstered in that position. She made a mental note to ask Jake, the next time she saw him, where she could buy a Stetson for Socrates.

  Grace swayed sleepily, squinting in the fretful flare of the torch in Leobardo’s hand. She held the chipped porcelain cup under her nose so she could breath in the aroma. It was the last of it she would smell for the foreseeable future.

  “Must we leave so early?” English was difficult enough for Grace at this hour. She concentrated on making sense in Spanish. “The market stalls will be empty anyway.”

  Socrates handed her Duke’s reins and the riding crop. Grace understood that the crop was more for discouraging ruffians than encouraging Duke.

  “If anything is for sale,” said Socrates, “it will be snatched up before the sun wipes the sleep from his eyes.”

  Since traveling with Lieutenant Angel’s rebels, Grace considered riding sidesaddle too effete. She wore what looked like a skirt that reached a few inches above her ankles and just below the tops of her high, lace-up shoes. Full pleats in front and back hid the fact that the garment was a pair of wide-legged trousers.

  Grace followed Socrates through the gate and heard Leobardo slide the big bolt home. The winch creaked as he lowered the oak beam into its iron cradle with a thud like a fortress’s portcullis locking. Or a cell door.

  One advantage of leaving this early was that the scores of refugees camped on the two plazas were still asleep. Grace did not have to ride past the children and sorrowful women pleading for the gift of a centavito, a little penny. She did not have to see the hunger in their eyes.

  The rain had stopped, but torrents of water rushed past, forming plump wakes behind Duke’s ankles, and the mule’s. The flood, with its crust of garbage and debris, tumbled down the steep street and plunged over the rim of the brush-choked gorge. In another hour the edges of the remaining puddles would shrink and dry in the morning sun.

  As usual, vendors had spent the night sleeping on mats next to their stalls. Now they were awake and hoping for customers. The market lacked the former throngs of people, dogs, livestock, produce, and poultry, but one thing remained plentiful. Grace wrinkled her nose. Even with so little food for sale it smelled as bad as always.

  She dismounted and led Duke down the first side street. Today she got lucky early. A black hen, tethered by a string, pecked at the litter of garbage. An old woman sat nearby, presiding at her makeshift stall of old boards and torn canvas like a judge on his bench. Grace started toward her, but Socrates made a small hissing sound.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He turned away so the woman could not see his face. He lowered his voice to a murmur.

  “The hen is there for a reason, Mamacita. Do not buy her.”

  “Why not?”

  “She is black.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “A healer rubs his patients with a live black chicken to absorb the illness. That hen probably carries someone’s sickness inside it.”

  Grace knew better than to scoff at a superstition powerful enough to make a reasonable man like Socrates reject food in a famine.

  “Can the black chicken be cleansed of the sickness?”

  Socrates hesitated. “Maybe.”

  “Do you know how?”

  “It must be smoked over a fire made of palm leaves, copal resin, and bay leaves that have been blessed by a priest.”

  Grace was relieved. As exorcism rituals went this was a simple one.

  “Palms are everywhere and we can buy copal and bay leaves here in the market.”

  “And a priest for the blessing?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Socrates looked dubious and for good reason. Priests were scarcer in Cuernavaca these days than Yorkshire pudding. But Grace found two more black chickens and a small sack of dried beans before giving up. Tied by their feet to the pommel, the chickens seemed resigned to their fate, but Socrates eyed them as though they harbored all the plagues of Egypt.

  On the way home Grace stopped at a small church on a narrow back street. It was called the Church of Jesus of Nazareth. She had passed it often, but she had never ventured inside. Several blocks away, the cathedral was more impressive, but Grace had always preferred the simplicity of this one. She dismounted and climbed the broad steps to the church while Socrates waited below with Duke and the mule.

  The carved plaster entryway was an orange-red, but showing white where the paint had chipped and fallen away. A plaque on the wall read in Spanish, “Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.”

  Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

  Where there is injury, pardon;

  Where there is doubt, faith;

  Where there is despair, hope;

  Where there is darkness, light;

  And where there is sadness, joy.

  Grace touched it lightly with the tips of her fingers. She stood that way for a minute or more, as if to give the words entrance to her heart.

  The weathered oak doors stood open and Grace walked into the cool twilight beyond them. Inside, the walls were of whitewashed plaster with a stripe of faded red trim around the base of the ceiling dome. The morning light from one small stained-glass window splashed in colorful patterns across the altar’s marble top. No pews stood between the door
and the altar, nor hid the vivid patterns of the majolica tiles on the floor.

  Grace expected the church to be empty, but a hundred or more devout filled the nave. Shawls hid the faces of the women. The men kneeled on the wide brims of their straw hats. Except for the occasional cough, the low murmur of prayer, and the clicking of rosary beads, a stillness pervaded the place.

  Grace fed coins into the slot in the poor box and picked up six candles and a handful of the pale, fragrant chunks of copal from a basket. Brightly painted saints stood in niches in the white plaster walls, but Grace was interested in only one. She stood in front of Saint Jude Tadeo, the patron of desperate causes. She lit the candles and set them among the scores of others flickering at the statue’s feet.

  She had little use for religion. She rather agreed with Lieutenant Angel, who said, “Don’t expect much from priests or cats.” But Grace considered faith as something separate from religion, and faith had a powerful presence here.

  She asked for St. Jude’s blessing on the leaves and the incense so she could feed the people she considered family. While she was at it, she asked him to help the widowed, the orphaned, the hungry, the ill, the frightened, and the homeless. When she finished, she had one last request.

  “Please, do not let them kill Federico Martín.”

  52

  Almost Dog Food

  Artillery speaks its own language and a soldier quickly learns it. Angel had heard the cries of wounded men and the agonies of dying horses. She was familiar with the pop-pop-pop of rifles and the bone-vibrating pulse of machine guns.

  She knew the crack of breaking bones and the sucking sound an abdomen made when sliced open by a machete. She was used to the keening of widows and orphans, and to the abrupt racket of grenades followed by the sigh of falling sand and the rattle of airborne rocks and debris. The only noise that could unnerve her was the screech of an artillery shell headed straight at her.

  A shell posted to her most current address had a different volume and pitch than one destined to land on one side of her or the other. By the sound, Angel could gauge how far and in which direction she had to run to avoid it.

  As this one whistled toward her she waved her men to scatter and spurred her horse toward a boulder. She leaned along the mare’s neck and pulled her serape over her own head and the horse’s. The mare flinched as the shell exploded, and Angel murmured in her ear to calm her.

  When the blanket had absorbed the thump of the last falling rock, Angel spurred the mare into the open and surveyed the rock-strewn landscape for signs of her command.

  “Vengan, muchachos,” she shouted. “Come out, boys.”

  Plinio rode toward her, but the others must have had their doubts. She could see the straw-colored peaks of sombreros here and there among the rocks and trees and the occasional horse’s rump, but no one left what ever cover they had found.

  “The boys are not used to artillery.” Plinio had a wry way with the obvious.

  “Soon those guns will be ours.”

  Angel looked back toward the distant roofs of Berta’s village. It had become Zapata’s headquarters for this assault on el gobierno’s barracks at Tres Marías, and the sixty pack mules of the government’s supply train milled about in a corral there. Their escort of federal soldiers had handed them over to Zapata and reined their own mounts in among his men. At least half of the mules had carried ammunition.

  “The federales must be almost out of bullets,” Angel said.

  Plinio shrugged. “Almost out of bullets is not the same as out of bullets.”

  Angel cupped her hands around her mouth. “El gobierno no tiene bolas,” she shouted. “The government has no balls.”

  Laughter bounced among the rocks as the rebel troop emerged, their horses’ hoofs clattering on the stony ground. Once her company had assembled Angel looked for Antonio. Her own men’s welfare came first, but she did not feel at ease unless she knew where he was.

  Another lieutenant had been killed this morning and Antonio had accepted command of his company. Now he rode along the rim of the deep ravine that separated him from her, but no matter. He and Angel shared the rare gift of being together in spirit even when they were apart.

  A wave would be seen by their men as a signal to charge, so Antonio touched the brim of his hat with two fingers. Angel returned the salute. She braced the staff of her company’s guidon on her thigh, held the reins lightly in her other hand, and waited for her men to assemble behind her.

  The rattle of their spurs and rifles and the creak of their saddles as they shifted their weight for the charge were music to her. When she raised the flag the wind caught it. Fluttering and snapping, it came alive like a horse eager to start a race he knew he could win. She turned to stare at Zapata sitting astride his white horse on a rise overlooking the mountainous terrain.

  His arm swept forward in the signal to charge. Angel raised the flag as high as her arm would reach.

  “Adelante, mis guachos,” she shouted. “Forward, my orphans.”

  With a cry of “Land and liberty,” she spurred the mare into a gallop. All she heard was the thunder of hooves and her own voice, but she knew her men were shouting, too. The charge became a series of skirmishes. Angel fired as she rode, chasing the federales through thorny underbrush, into canyons, and among rock falls.

  The thrill of it intoxicated her. By mid afternoon the government soldiers had fled helter-skelter toward Cuernavaca. Coated with dust, bleeding from cuts and scratches, soaked in sweat, and grinning, Angel rounded up as many of her men as she could find. Together they rode back to Tres Marías. The barracks, the train station, and the village were theirs.

  She watered and rubbed down her mare and tethered her in a patch of grass. Then she went to the makeshift hospital under a canvas awning. She found all three of her missing men there, and after she made sure that their wounds weren’t serious, she sauntered to the camp to compare stories with Antonio.

  She didn’t find him. She didn’t find him in the thatched shelter that served as a kitchen, or in the market near the train station. He wasn’t tending to the horses. He wasn’t at the periphery of the officers in conference with General Zapata. By late afternoon all of Antonio’s men had returned and no one had seen him. When his horse walked in, reins dragging, Angel tried not to panic.

  She stuffed bandages into her knapsack and filled one canteen with water and another with tequila. She found José and the two of them separated so they could cover more area in the search for him. She rode slowly over the broken ground, calling his name.

  She saw plenty of corpses. Almost all of them wore government uniforms, but her breath caught in her throat anyway until she made sure none of them was Antonio. She hadn’t time for prayers, but she made the sign of the cross over each one, barely slowing her mare before moving on.

  She cursed the sun as it slid closer to the western peaks, gathering its light to take with it. She cursed herself for not having thought to bring a torch. By the time the rocks loomed like ghosts in the deepening twilight, she had strayed several miles from Tres Marías. Every hundred yards or so she reined the mare to a stop, cupped her hands around her mouth, and called Antonio’s name

  When his reply came, Angel thought it might be a bird or animal. She froze, listening as if her own life depended on it. The cry came again and this time she recognized the voice.

  “Mierda.”

  She laughed. “¿’Tonio, donde estás?”

  All she heard was, “Malditos perros.” Damned dogs. And she barely heard that.

  She walked to the edge of the ravine and saw him lying half covered by rocks at the bottom. A fallen boulder stopped just short of crushing him, but it had wedged over his chest, making movement impossible. A pack of gaunt dogs with a lot of wolf in them were eyeing him from about ten yards away. Angel pitched rocks at them, but that didn’t impress them. They continued staring at Antonio.

  Angel wished she could lob a grenade in among them, but that might
have harmed Antonio. Besides, she had used her last grenade to blow up a machine gun emplacement. Firing her last two rounds finally convinced the dogs to leave the larder.

  She shouted for José, then walked along the rim until she found a slope gradual enough for her mare. The two of them slid down it in a riot of gravel and dust. Climbing back up would be difficult, but as Antonio often observed about her, she would blow up that bridge when she came to it.

  Rocks covered Antonio’s legs. He must have dislodged them when he fell off his horse and slid down the side of the ravine. Blood from a gash on his temple ran down his cheek and soaked his collar. His face was ashen, probably from loss of blood, but he managed to wink at her.

  Angel wanted to sob with relief. Instead, she put her hands on her hips and shook her head as though the sad state of his uniform had failed an inspection. The disappointed wolves-in-dogs’-clothing howled not far away.

  “Now you have a new nickname, Ugly.”

  “What, Brat?” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “Dog Food.”

  She started pulling off the rocks and pitching them. Most of them weren’t much bigger than a loaf of bread, but they made quite a heap. Another hour or two and they would have been his cairn. If Angel hadn’t found him before nightfall he would not have lived to see the sun rise.

  José appeared at the rim of the ravine. “I wondered who was making so much racket.”

  He helped Angel roll the boulder off Antonio and down a slight slope. It scattered the dogs who went off in search of easier pickings. They would find plenty to eat today.

  Angel allowed herself a few tears as she poured tequila on the gash on his face. It was a deep one that just missed his eye. She bound it with strips of cloth from the bottom of some soldadera’s skirt, and then helped José clear away the last of the rocks.

  José probed along his son’s legs and feet. “I think the ankle is broken.”