Dr. Brinkley's Tower (40 page)

JUST AS MARIA'S TEAR OVERCAME THE RESISTANCE
of her lower eyelid, tumbling down her cheek like a child rolling down a hill, Madam's long-time amor entered the grand room of his hacienda, a place in which his parents had once hosted luxurious affairs attended by aristocracy from all over northern México. He rarely went in there and never spent much time when he did — the ceiling bowed and the north wall had been riddled by mortar fire, giving it a riveted, undulating quality. Everything smelled like damp wool and mould, and the few pieces of furniture that remained were covered with old bedsheets. Everything else, more or less, had been sacrificed to looters.

The hacendero found this difficult to bear. He still shuddered every time he considered that his great-grandfather's fire irons, which had borne the Garcia crest as proudly as a ship flies its flag, had probably been melted down to make rifle pellets. He still felt a painful rumble in his stomach every time he thought that the room's immense sofa, a piece
hand-created by Galician craftsmen, had no doubt been hatcheted and burned for warmth. He still felt the onset of manly tears when he imagined that his family's china, which dated back to the Inquisition, had been purloined so that rebel cooks would have something on which to slop tripe stew and refried beans.

He sat in a huge draped chair where, it was said, a visiting Galician bishop had once sipped tea and commented on matters of the Church. Across one wall was a procession of gilt-framed paintings, each one depicting a member of the hacendero's ancestry. They too had been desecrated during the revolution, no doubt by leftist thugs possessed by feelings of righteousness. There was his great-great-uncle, a magistrate who sat with the royal court in Madrid, his face slashed by the blade of a resentful communist. There was his grandmother, a woman whose ancestors, it was said, had helped plot the Crusades: in an act of political commentary her face had been smeared by rebel excrement. There was his father, a man who had the ear of Porfirio Díaz and the respect of all who knew him, a pair of glasses and horns drawn on his magisterial face. Finally there was the hacendero's wife, Doña Prudencia, the outline of an erect member drawn so that it was about to enter her slightly parted mouth.

The hacendero dropped his head and felt particularly moronic. He could still remember the day she had stood before him, looking officious in her riding boots, a long tan dress with a high lace collar, and the black kid gloves she always wore when embarking on a journey. Her steamer trunk was packed and waiting on the porch.

— You're a fool, Antonio.

Of course she was right. Every other hacienda owner in northern México had sold up and gone back to Spain, or had paid paramilitary groups for protection. He had done neither, thinking it a poor way to repay the country that had hosted him since he was a boy. The simple fact was that he loved México, and always had. He loved the sense of excitement in the air, the passion expressed so easily by its people. He loved the space, and the taste of tequila. He loved cacti and endless skies. Of course, there was one other consideration, one that he'd downplayed at the time. His heart had alighted elsewhere.

As the hacendero regarded his gallery of defaced paintings, it occurred to him that each portrait was sitting in moody judgement. For some reason he had never noticed this before. Yet it was as plain as the arrival of a new day: the slight air of condescension in their eyes, the stiffness caused by disappointment in their carriage. A barely detectable whiff of anger.

He thought
I deserve your censure. I do. I have failed the Garcia name. I have done nothing less.

From far off he heard a flare-up of the fighting that had taken control of Corazón de la Fuente. He heard the ricochet of bullets and the hollers of downed men needing help and the mad scramble of those trying to get out of the way. It was a medley of sounds he heard two or three times per day, lasting each time for no more than a few minutes, only to be followed by a leaden silence. This time, however, he also heard a desperate equine scream.

The hacendero leapt from his chair and ran through the length of his house, and when he made it to the paddock, he
knew exactly what had happened. Frightened by the fighting, Diamante had made a run at the wood-plank fence that the Reyes brothers had constructed to replace the wire enclosure. The poor horse now lay on his side, mouth frothing, eyes wide with fear, clearly in pain. His right foreleg was crooked and trembling and clearly shattered. His nose dripped a thin pink gelatin.

The hacendero kneeled and took the horse's head in his hands. For the first time in weeks, the horse didn't fight him — he merely closed his eyes and took slow, rasping breaths. The hacendero patted him gently, his fingers tracing the diamond between the animal's glorious burnt-orange eyes. He spoke gently to his horse, describing a world where there were no such things as wire fences or bad weather or pain. Diamante, he noted sadly, seemed to be listening, and so he kept talking of a different world in a different time and all of the wonderful, pleasing things that were to be found in that world.

As he comforted Diamante, the hacendero thought about his life with horses. When he considered the time he had spent in that world, he understood that the moments in which he had felt most free, and most impassioned by the act of living, had been atop a caballo. He smiled. Images of the horses he had owned, going all the way back to a pony his father had presented to him when he was a boy of just six, flashed through his mind, a galloping procession of palominos and pintos and galiceños and mustangs.

The hacendero paused for a moment and listened to the rise and fall of his horse's ribs. They made a soft, restful
shhh
that reminded him of the waves of the ocean, and he couldn't
help but think of the time he had ridden Diamante all the way to Matamoros and dipped his boot in the Golfo de México. Though they'd followed the Río Grande all the way there, the hacendero had decided to follow a canyon back through the sierras. It was a glorious decision — the air was fresh and the peaks were alive with birds and for dinner they pulled fresh fish from a stream they found halfway through the range. The next day, towards the end of morning, the canyon narrowed and they came upon an encampment of mestizos. There were dozens of them, living in itinerant poverty, their day revolving around a sooty mesquite fire. The hacendero was nervous; banditry and even murder were not unheard of in the mountains of northeastern México.

A couple of older men had approached.

— Hola.

— Hola, primos.

— That's a nice horse.

— Gracias.

— Where are you going?

— To a small town near Piedras. It's called Corazón de la Fuente.

Their eyes lit up. — Where they have that radio tower?

— Sí.

The men digested this information. Both had weak, watery eyes and dirty clothing.

— You still have a ways to go. Would you like to share lunch with us?

He'd sat and accepted a metal plate towering with tortillas, beans, and armadillo meat charred over the fire and then sprinkled with lime juice and salt. They were drinking
a warm homemade cerveza that tasted like sweet earth and barley. It was, he thought, the most delicious meal he'd ever eaten. When he finished, a dark-skinned woman appeared and asked if he'd like more. He thanked her, and halfway through his second serving realized that there was no reason in the world why these poor Mexicanos, assaulted by poor government and bad soil, should be so solicitous and kind to a wealthy Spaniard. And yet they were. If there was a soul of México, the hacendero thought, he had found it here, around a fire of low embers, in the company of giving strangers.

Diamante chuffed with pain.

— Caballo, he whispered. — On the morning of his death, Fajardo Jimenez gave me a cache of dynamite the size of a large stove. Today I am going to use it. It is a promise I am making to you. Perhaps it will go all wrong and I will die and I will see you soon in heaven. This could happen, and if it does, at least I will have gone down fighting.

Because of the conflict in town, the hacendero had started wearing a holster, even when sleeping in his huge, perpetually creaking bed. He withdrew his pistol and felt the wooden handle rest heavy and warm in his hand. His tears flowed with abandon, for the rules regarding manly behaviour were different when the death of a beloved animal was involved. He crossed himself and prayed, not just for his own soul and the soul of his horse but also for the soul of Madam Félix and his long-departed wife and, most of all, for this beautiful, tormented country called México. He lifted the pistol and placed it against the horse's temple. He could tell by looking into Diamante's eyes that the animal fully knew what was
happening; he was facing his end with a courage that the hacendero doubted he himself could equal.

— I am sorry, said Antonio Garcia before he pulled the trigger.

He stood, walked back into his house, and buried the pistol in a hole in the earthen floor of his root cellar, never wanting to see the wretched thing again. Choking back tears, he walked through the ejido and emerged on Avenida Cinco de Mayo. He turned west, towards the village where he had lived for all but six of his years on this planet. Before reaching the plaza, where he ran the risk of catching a stray bullet, he cut around behind the town hall. He knew of a back door there that, once upon a time, had been used by cleaning staff; a few weeks earlier, a looter had broken the lock by striking it with a rock, and it had remained open ever since. He entered and walked up a cool, silent staircase, past families who were now camping in the hall itself. When he reached the mayor's office, he found Miguel Orozco standing at his window, looking sadly over the plaza. The mayor turned and looked at the hacendero.

— Antonio, he said. — What has happened?

— Tonight is the night, was the hacendero's response.

FRANCISCO RAMIREZ LAY IN BED, FULLY DRESSED
under a thin cotton blanket, until he felt certain that the rest of his family was asleep. He stood and looked at his sleeping brothers, marvelling at the way they could be such devils during the day and such restful little angels at night. Without really understanding why, he kissed them both lightly on the forehead and said, just in case,
Take care, hermanitos.
He then paused outside his grandmother's room, listening to the telltale snores she produced when asleep. This left him with one last obstacle: he had to pass by his father, who slept in a hammock slung in the main room.

Francisco crept to the entrance of the room, aware of the way in which his boots creaked against the floorboards. The room was dark, though green light pulsed through gaps in the front window curtain. He listened for low, regular breathing, and then tiptoed past his motionless father. Upon reaching the casa's front door, he put his hand on the latch.

— Mijo.

Francisco turned, and realized that his father had been watching him from the start.

— Are you going out? Francisco the elder asked in a low voice.

— Sí, answered the younger, who then watched as his father slowly climbed out of his hammock. He was wearing a plain white night smock, and as he walked his narrow feet barely made a sound against the knotted floor. He stopped before his son.

— Are you going to do something I don't want to know about?

— Sí, papi.

— Francisco. If, in your wisdom, you feel it is something you really must do, I will not question you.

— Gracias.

— Would it make a difference if I told you to be careful?

— Tonight, papi, careful has nothing to do with it.

— I know that, mijo.

His father turned, walked back to his hammock, and climbed in, the ceiling rafters groaning. Francisco turned and, his face burning, walked into the quiet street. As he'd done a few nights earlier, he darted from alcove to alcove, his movements timed to match the moments in between the pulsing of the corona. Halfway along Avenida Hidalgo, he thought he heard the sound of a pistol being cocked. Francisco froze and listened intently; the only thing he could hear was the dull roar produced by his ears. He continued, ducking from alley to alley, undeterred by the occasional dog bark or flutter of bat wings. Upon reaching the edge of town, he broke into a cautious run, such that by the time he
reached the door of Azula's shack he was out of breath.

The door flung open.

— It's about time, said the curandera. — I thought maybe you'd lost your nerve.

Francisco shook his head.

— Good. Well, the powder is on the table. You're young. You get it.

Francisco gulped. The bomb the curandera had used to destroy the boulder had been the size of a small stack of tortillas. Tonight she'd filled an entire burlap bag with the devilish powder. Easing it onto his shoulders caused him to grunt with effort.

— Good thing you're big, said the curandera. — My recommendation is that you don't drop it. It'd be a waste of time if we blew ourselves up instead of the tower.

With such perilous cargo on his back, Francisco had to choose his steps carefully, for the path leading down the hill was scattered with rocks and brambles and tree roots. The weight of the bag pressed on his shoulders, causing a burning pain; meanwhile, the curandera hopped down the path with the litheness of a mountain goat. At the bottom of the hill, she waited.

— What's the matter, joven? Can't keep up with an old woman?

Francisco struggled. When he finally reached her, he gingerly put down the bag and said: — Por favor, I need a rest.

Azula snickered. — Heavy son of a puta, isn't it?

— Sí, said Francisco as he worked to regain his breath.

— Well, don't wait too long. You don't want someone to spot us.

At which point they heard voices. They both turned and peered through the kelpy gloom. Moving towards them was a quartet of figures. Francisco's heart raced; if they were Ramón's goons then their lives would be over. But as the figures approached, Francisco noted something familiar about the way each of them walked. One, he was sure, had the hiccupping stride of Mayor Orozco. When they got a bit closer, he realized that it
was
the mayor, and that he was accompanied by Antonio Garcia, Carlos Hernandez, and Father Alvarez (who, Francisco noted with extreme surprise, was wearing the garb of a priest). Each was carrying a large package.