Dr. Brinkley's Tower (34 page)

Ramón and his thugs had been there about a week, and their method of surveillance had evolved into a routine. Every three hours or so they emerged on horseback from the corral that backed the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures and slowly loped along Avenida Cinco de Mayo, their horses treading upon anyone who didn't have the sense to get out of the way. After a slow, menacing turn around the circumference of the plaza, they continued clopping along Cinco de Mayo. When
they reached its end, they cast admiring glances towards the hacienda belonging to a Spanish hacendero named Antonio Garcia, many of them making a mental note to ransack what was left of the place the next time they had a full afternoon to themselves. They then turned south and passed through the quaint plazita that was home to something called the Pozo de Confesiones, where an elderly man sat parked in a homemade wicker wheelchair, shakily drooling and staring at the ground; the other townsfolk referred to him as the molinero, and made a habit of leaving parcels of food and drinking water on his spindly, quivering lap.

The horsemen clopped along Avenida Hidalgo, casting threatening glances at anyone who looked as though he might be planning something. Upon re-entering the plaza central, they languorously patrolled its perimeter a second time, bullwhips looped at their sides, their holsters containing pistols the size of rolling pins. They exited via the south end, a route that took them by the cantina belonging to a moustachioed hombre named Carlos Hernandez. Here they dismounted, went inside, and ordered rounds of tequila, mescal, cervezas, and an odoriferous pulque that was routinely left too long in the sun. When they eventually stumbled to their feet, they made no attempt to recompense the cantina owner. In the minds of Ramón and his White Shirts, it was the price the town had to pay for the restoration of law and order.

The horsemen then rode towards the far corner of the pueblo, near where an old crone referred to as the curandera was rumoured to live. They had all taken note of her filthy, teetering shack, for they all knew that she would be the person who would treat the infections, sores, and inflammations
they would inevitably contract in the brothel. The White Shirts then returned to the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures, where they watered their horses and smoked and talked of the old days. Those who had developed manly urges headed inside, where they demanded release from a Maria of choice. Thus sated, they napped until their next patrol.

With such rigorous policing, the town soon fell into a tense, sorrowful gloom, not unlike the one that had manifested itself during the years of the revolution. Graffiti denouncing Dr. Brinkley appeared on walls and fence lines, and many of the townsfolk got into the habit of tossing putrid food at the base of the tower, such that the site soon began to resemble a large open-air compost heap. Upon passing in the street, long-time residents were sure to greet each other with only the most reserved tilt of their cowboy hats, afraid that anything more might somehow offend the White Shirts.

The attacks on Madam and her Marias ceased. There were no more slurs, dismissive gestures, or unkind words. If one of the Marias felt like taking a walk, she could do so alone, at any hour of the day or night, confident that any and all townsfolk would now cross the street to avoid her. Madam, meanwhile, resumed her long-standing practice of strolling the plaza, puffing contentedly on a Honduran cigarillo, the sun falling warm across her shoulders. To be truthful, she felt bad that her fellow townsfolk, upon seeing her, now ducked inside their homes, not trusting themselves to feign the cordiality insisted on by Ramón. It was a reluctance, she hoped, that would dwindle once the ragged old mercenary left her employ. Given the way things were going, that would undoubtedly be soon.

So complete was the compliance offered by the citizens of Corazón de la Fuente that Ramón and his men soon grew bored. To counteract the monotony, they spent more time drinking at the cantina, playing endless rounds of cards, and having their way with Madam's youthful, bronze-skinned employees. These pursuits sated Ramon and his pistoleros for a short while only; they had a yearning for action that had been growing, like a malignancy, since the death of their sworn enemy, Pancho Villa.

One afternoon, Ramón and two of his White Shirts were lazing on one of the plaza's wrought-iron benches, passing a bottle of tequila requisitioned from the cantina. Shortly after they'd tossed away the emptied bottle, one of the town's chicas, a relatively plain girl of no more than thirteen years of age, hurried by them, a filled laundry basket in her arms. The inevitable whistles and catcalls followed: it was the way in which the material of her skirt defined the outline of her nascent hips.

— Ay, qué bella, said one of the men. — I tell you, Ramón, there ought to be a law.

— Ay sí, there ought to be.

There was a moment of silence, during which one of them belched.

— You know, Ramón added, — that's the problem with this shitty little town: there are no laws. And no police, unless of course you count that gimpy little worm they call mayor.

— You're right, said the others.

— In fact, said Ramón, who was now getting excited,
— that's what we should do. We should give these people some goddamn rules to follow.

And so Ramón invented a code of conduct for the people of Corazón de la Fuente to disobey. Ironically, many of these bore a moralistic hue, which is always the case when laws are created by the despicable. Women who wore blouses that were at all clinging or low-cut were stopped, punitively fondled, and told to go home and change into something more befitting a good Catholic woman. If the White Shirts heard rumours of a man with a mistress — a description that applied to the majority of hombres in Corazón de la Fuente — they promptly went to the man's door, shot off the lock, dragged him out onto the street, and forced him to apologize so loudly that his frightened voice ricocheted off the town's pink and blue adobe walls.

One afternoon while sitting around a table in the cantina, Ramón's men discussed the problem of crowding in the streets. After an hour of drunkenly tabled ideas, they came up with a system of controlling pedestrian traffic that involved crosswalks, one-way streets, and a ban on unnecessary sprinting. These rules were posted for half a day. Anyone caught violating one of them was forced to imitate a chicken in the very same bandstand where the Reyes brothers had once performed chokeholds and half-nelsons. There was no shortage of offenders — Ramón's rules were so complicated and nonsensical that Ramón himself barely understood them. This, of course, was deliberate. Ramón and his men now spent entire afternoons in the plaza, firing pistols at the feet of violators who performed their punishment with insufficient zest.

Deemed a hazard, open fires were prohibited, even though the ejido dwellers and the homeless people camping
in the plazas depended on them for their evening meals. Singing, energetic dancing, and public displays of drunkenness were likewise banned; the latter particularly stuck in the craw of Corazón's citizenry, given how Ramón's men reeked, at all hours of the night and day, of liquor. Marihuana was likewise illegalized, despite the fact that it grew abundantly along the banks of the Río Grande — it was Ramón's stated belief that its effects made people lazy and that anyone caught smoking even the smallest amount deserved to circle the town while tied, stomach down, to the back of a burro. Naturally, Ramón and his White Shirts smoked all of the confiscated marihuana themselves, becoming so forgetful that they often punished the same individual two or three times for the same infraction.

One afternoon, a group of Ramón's men were sitting in the plaza bandstand, passing a bottle of tequila requisitioned from the cantina. Soon they were all howling drunk. Pistols were discharged, and the air filled with the scent of gunpowder. Two of them — both had low simian brows and an odour reminiscent of hog slop — decided to visit the store operated by Fajardo Jimenez. There they picked out packs of American cigarettes, bottles of warm pop, bags of processed tortillas, avocados, ammunition, limes, bunches of coriander, and the long strips of marinated beef neck used for fajitas. The drunker of the White Shirts stumbled and knocked over a pyramid of frijole cans. The display came down in staccato thuds, each can making a small splintered divot in the lacquered floorboards.

When the White Shirt who had knocked over the cans did nothing to right the display — he even laughed, a wad of
sputum gurgling in the back of his throat — Fajardo Jimenez, unable to contain himself any longer, spoke.

— Excuse me.

The men turned, eyes narrowed.

— You forgot to pay.

The White Shirts were sure they'd misheard, so remote was the possibility that this carnivalesque store owner was actually asking for compensation.

Fajardo leaned on the counter, revealing hands that looked like bear paws. — Por favor, he said. — I'm sure you just forgot.

The White Shirts regarded each other with a look tinged with adolescent joy, and then they laughed like hyenas. The smaller of the two took out the pistol he carried at his waist, pointed it drunkenly, and shot Fajardo in the fleshy part of the upper thigh. Fajardo fell to the floor, moaning. The White Shirt, meanwhile, didn't think to hurry; he levelled his pistol and was about to finish the job when the other White Shirt put a hand on the man's worn, grease-stained sleeve.

— Not so fast, primo. This hombre is clearly an insurrectionist. It's our duty to make an example of him.

— Sí, sí. A Villa supporter through and through.

They discussed possible courses of justice, not caring that a bleeding man was writhing on the floor next to them. After a minute or two, they came to the earnest decision that shooting him was too quick, lynching was a waste of good rope, and tarring and feathering would necessitate too much work. Instead they concluded that the solution lay in the rope one of them had in his saddlebag. As the shorter White Shirt sat on Fajardo's heaving chest, the taller tied an end around the
store owner's feet. After admiring each other's handiwork, they dragged Fajardo out of the store, the back of his head bumping on the steps leading to the dusty calle. There they secured the other end of the rope to the saddle of a horse.

As they began to drag Fajardo through the streets of the village, the other White Shirts heard the Zacatecan's screams. They all came out and, relieved that something was finally happening in this dreary little two-bit town, mounted their horses and began firing their pistols in the air while fiendishly whooping and screaming old war slogans at the tops of their lungs. Even though this produced an extreme amount of noise, a peculiar form of silence also descended upon the town, a silence that existed beneath the White Shirts' sadistic revelry not unlike the underlay of a carpet. It was a silence made from impotence and fear, from noses pressed against windowpanes, from the riddance of a town's collective soul. It was the sound, they all realized, of history doing the only thing it knows how to do.

As the bandoleros charged through town, slowly killing one of Corazón de la Fuente's favourite citizens, those living in the streets and laneways kept their heads down, seeing nothing. Those lucky enough to reside in houses went back to their griddles and hammocks. The screams and whoops kept on. They echoed off the church, the hall, the cantina. Grown men cried, forcing their women to hold them, for the action in the street was inspiring blood-soaked flashbacks of the revolution. Consoling the men also helped the town's women ease their own suffering, for they all remembered the days before the tower, when everyone had been as gaunt as beggars, and Fajardo Jimenez had been known for pointing
at perfectly good produce and saying
Ay, señora, some of those peppers are too blemished to sell. It'd help me out if you could take a couple off my hands …

For this reason it was mostly the town's children who witnessed the store owner's demise — children who broke free from their mothers and, attracted by the noise, pressed their awed, wide-eyed faces against windowpanes, only to discover that, for the innocent, horror can be a difficult thing to look away from.

IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING THE SUMMARY EXECUTION
of Fajardo Jimenez, the town's gloom worsened, becoming an icy, deadened calm. The sounds of living that had previously emanated from the ejido and the plaza after nightfall turned to a sombre, almost sepulchral, quiet. The homeless living on the streets of Corazón de la Fuente, too exhausted and poor to travel, sought refuge in the town's nooks and crannies, such that it was no longer possible to traverse an alley or peer down a dead-end lane without encountering a penurious family from the south, attempting to cook tortillas over low white embers. Long-time residents of Corazón rarely left their casas, emerging only to forage for food, wash their clothes in steaming outdoor tubs, or attend to their jobs as day labourers over the border in Del Rio. Mothers, who as teenagers of the revolution had taken sanctuary in the gulches and gullies surrounding Corazón, escorted their daughters to their old hiding places, often breaking into tears along the way.