Last Train from Cuernavaca (16 page)

“
El gobierno
attacked before dawn.” José's hands shook as he reached for the canteen Angel held out. He took a long drink from it before he went on with his story. “They went from one house to another, shooting what ever moved.”

“How did you escape,
Papá
?” asked Antonio.

José glanced at his wife, Serafina, sitting nearby with a blanket draped around her shoulders. She rocked back and forth, crying silently. “Your mother and I have not slept inside the house since General Fatso returned to Morelos.”

“General?”

“Rubio is a general now.” José continued his account. “Every night we unroll our mats in
el corral,
the courtyard. When we heard the shooting, we ran out the back gate and hid like mice in the cornfield. We saw black smoke rising from the village.”

“Did they take the women?” Angel asked.

José stared at the ground. His answer was barely audible. “I don't know.”

It was a question none of the men would have bothered to ask because they knew the answer. Of course, the
federales
took the women. When the army was through with them they would send them to labor camps in a jungle so far away the forest canopy might as well shade the muck of another continent. The only way to save all the women was to drive
los federales
out of Morelos and General Huerta from the President's Palace.

Angel had a more immediate plan, although “plan” might be too ambitious a name for it.

“We will hunt down the curs and free the women.”

Angel could tell by the looks on their faces that no one liked the idea. Even Antonio shook his head.

Angel couldn't believe it. “
¡Carajo!
You let them defile our women and yet you pretend to be men?”

“If we attack the
federales
they will shoot the captives,” said Antonio. “And Colonel Contreras would not approve such a raid.”

At least the men looked chagrined as they skulked back to their off-duty pastimes. Angel spat in their direction, then stalked away to perch on a boulder and brood. She stared at the dark clouds massing over the mountains in the direction of the Capital. She was so preoccupied she didn't remember that the rains weren't supposed to come for two more weeks.

She gave a start at the sound of Plinio's voice behind her.

“Trying to rescue those captives will not return your mother to you, my child.”

“Quien de los suyos se aleja, Dios lo deja,”
said Angel. “He who leaves his family is forsaken by God.”

“Then God has forsaken most of us, for we are truly orphans.”

“Mexico is our mother. These mountains are our
casitas,
our little houses.” Angel scooped up a fistful of dry, rocky soil and shook it at him. “This dirt is our soul.”

“I pray you are right, my daughter. I pray God has not forsaken the handfuls of dirt that are our souls.” When he walked away, his shoulders slumped as if still bearing the eighty pounds of sugarcane he had carried on his back most of his life.

Angel decided to ride to San Miguel and track the
federales
to wherever they were keeping the women. Then maybe she could convince her comrades to rescue them. Her plan involved leaving camp without permission, but she would take that up with Contreras when she returned. She had never tried to take advantage of the fact that her commanding officer was her father's old friend, but she would this time.

Even if she couldn't locate the captives, a trip to San Miguel could be useful. Maybe the soldiers' ravening horde of
galletas,
the camp followers, had overlooked some caches of corn or beans. And if
el gobierno
had burned the houses and corn cribs, Fatso's troops would not likely return there. The caves in the cliff face below the village would be safe. They would provide shelter from the rains.

In the distance, thunder rumbled approval of her plan.

 

From the balcony above the Colonial's wide entryway Grace watched lightning flick like snakes' tongues at the mountain peaks near Tres Marías. She could count on two facts of life in Mexico. The
tabachine
trees would adorn themselves with flame-red flowers in March and the annual rains would arrive in May. So why was an escort of dark clouds mustering in mid-April?

Their color, like tarnished gunmetal, matched Grace's mood. Two factors fueled her gloom. One was Rico's absence. The other was Rubio's presence.

Rubio had arrived in Cuernavaca much puffed up over his double promotion to general and governor. General Huerta must have learned an important lesson from his former boss, Porfirio Díaz: promote incompetents. Bumblers rarely staged successful coup attempts. Porfirio's cousin Felix had recently proven that.

Rubio spent a lot of time with his troops in the field, for which Grace was grateful. But when he came to town he passed more of his waking hours at the Colonial than in the pink stone hulk called the Governor's Palace. He claimed he came here for María's spicey stewed plums and the piano music, but Grace had seen him staring at José's daughter, Socorro. She kept the girl busy in the kitchen whenever his brass-bedizened bulk darkened the hotel's doorway.

Grace had nicknamed José's daughter Cora, but the child was so silent and sylph-like that Lyda called her The Wraith. The only time Grace heard her laugh or speak above a murmur was when she and Annie had their heads together. Because of her friendship with Cora, Annie was becoming fluent in Nahuatl.

Grace envied Annie's ease with languages. She considered Nahuatl, and not the digestive distress known as the trots, to be Moctezuma's real revenge. She suspected the Aztecs had designed their talk to trip up the tongue, not trip off it, but she loved to hear her employees converse, their voices as soft and mysterious as black velvet.

Mrs. Fitz-Goring's voice was neither soft nor mysterious. It erupted from the dining hall below the balcony.

“Stupid girl!”

“Bollocks,” Grace muttered. Rubio, the spring rains, and now Fitz-Goring. What vengeful Aztec deity had she offended to bring all this down on her head?

Grace headed for the dining hall at her emergency gait. She had had the seamstress sew gored panels into her skirts to allow more movement. An unfashionably long hemline hid the walk that to casual observers looked regal. Each stride, however, swallowed two stair steps or covered a meter of the Colonial's tile-paved corridors.

She found Mrs. Fitz-Goring standing like a monument to umbrage in the middle of the crowded dining room. Socorro stared up at her, as wide-eyed as a rabbit hypnotized by a cobra. Grace gently grasped the girl's shoulders and turned her toward the kitchen.

She reassured her with one of the few phrases she knew in Nahuatl, “
Ca ye cualli.
It's all right,” and gave her a nudge to set her in motion. Then she faced the wrath of the dowager du jour.

“Good evening, Mrs. Fitz-Goring. What seems to be the problem?”

“It's not what
seems
to be the problem, Mrs. Knight. It's what
is
the problem.” The dewlaps on each side of Mrs. Fitz-Goring's jaw quivered with indignation. They quivered so often that Wattles had become her nickname in the kitchen and back hallways.

“That clumsy girl spilled hot tea on me. She scalded me and ruined my gown.”

Try as she might, Grace could see no evidence of tea on the dress, but saying so wouldn't help matters. “Bring the frock to Lyda tomorrow and she will see that it is laundered. And of course your dinner this evening will be complimentary.”

“Your girls won't be scrubbing my new charmeuse on a rock in some filthy river, will they?”

“I assure you we have a proper laundry.”

Wattles looked unconvinced. “Spigs are so lazy, it's a wonder you coax any work at all from them, Mrs. Knight.”

Grace lowered her voice so as not to create more of a scene by chastising a guest. She also had discovered that in situations like these the more quietly she spoke the more closely people listened. It was as if she were sharing a secret rather than delivering an ultimatum.

“What you say in the privacy of your room is your concern, Mrs.

Fitz-Goring, but we do not allow the word ‘spig' in the public areas of the Colonial.”

“What harm in it?” Wattles looked genuinely surprised that Grace would find offense. “It is merely short for ‘No spigga da Eenglis,' is it not?”

“Nevertheless, I must ask you to help us maintain standards of decorum.”

Grace had found that the word “decorum” worked like a charm for most British patrons, at least when they were sober. She waited until Mrs. Fitz-Goring had sat back down on her chair and wedged herself between its sturdy arms, then she left to comfort Cora. Behind her, she could hear Wattles soliciting sympathy from the other diners for the shabby treatment she had received at the hands of help and management. She did not, however, repeat the word “spig.” And Wattles wasn't likely to get much sympathy anyway. These days, most of the hotel guests were grateful to have a roof over their heads, three meals a day, and no one shooting at them.

Because Fitz-Goring occupied a room here, Lyda had to turn someone away today. The Mexicans might be able to view coups with a fatalistic fortitude, but not so outsiders. Wattles was one of thousands of foreigners who had come to Cuernavaca to escape the ominous uncertainty in Mexico City. As a result, the Colonial was full to capacity.

And then there was the army. In the upstairs wing, officers slept on cots, eight to a room. Grace was grateful for the business, but she felt as frayed as the hems of José Perez's white cotton trousers.

That reminded her. José was supposed to have brought more pottery two days ago. He never missed a delivery. She would ask Cora about him in the morning. In the meantime, she had to convince the poor child that she had done nothing wrong and Grace was not angry with her in the least.

Socorro was always quiet, but these days Grace detected fright in her eyes, like a deer facing a shotgun. Maybe Annie could find out what was troubling her.

When Grace tried to talk to Socorro, the girl cowered like a cornered rabbit. Annie had difficulty convincing her that
Mamacita
wasn't angry with her. Grace suspected that Annie included some choice words in Nahuatl to describe Mrs. Fitz-Goring, because Socorro smiled, ever so slightly. Grace beamed back at her, trying to coax a bolder smile out into the open. A smile in Socorro's luminous eyes and on the succulent curves of her lips could brighten the darkest day.

Socorro claimed she didn't know why her father hadn't come. Grace believed her, but she detected a fear that went beyond the prospect of being sent home in disgrace.

She decided to go to the market, talk to José, and get to the bottom of his absence. She tucked twenty
pesos
and some small change into the hidden pocket in her wide leather belt. She put on her long canvas duster over her everyday skirt and bodice. She laced up her oldest shoes and pinned her new straw sailor hat onto the upswept heap of her dark copper hair.

In case the storm clouds made good on their promise of rain, she took an umbrella from the bouquet of them in the tall vase by her office door. It was of navy blue cotton with a cover of the same material and it had a stout ebony handle. It was the serviceable sort carried by a country doctor or a parson.

As she passed the front desk she told Lyda she was going to the market to look for José. She waited for the mule-drawn trolley to pass by the front of the hotel, then crossed the tracks and set out on foot diagonally across the plaza.

The market's vendors and shoppers filled the narrow streets near the Governor's Palace. They jammed in until it seemed as though the addition of one more person would make any movement, forward, backward, or sideways, impossible.

When Grace finally reached the area on the side street where the folk of San Miguel usually sat, she was astonished to find it unoccupied. She stared at the hard-packed dirt, bare except for the market's usual assortment of rotten produce and anonymous animal parts.

José and his neighbors always came to Cuernavaca on Tuesday. Grace's annoyance turned to alarm. She didn't notice people jostling her as they passed. She asked the hard-scrabble entrepreneurs on either side what had become of the San Migueleños. They shrugged and swore they didn't know.

Grace didn't think of herself as impulsive, which showed how little she knew. That going alone to San Miguel might not be a good idea didn't occur to her. She had visited the village often in the past months and she felt as safe there as in Cuernavaca. Socrates had taken the Pierce to Tepotzlan early that morning on an errand, so Grace walked to the side of the plaza where the horse-drawn cabs gathered.

The driver who had made the trip with her before demanded three times the usual rate.

She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes, a signal of displeasure in any language. “Why?”

“Zapata.” He crossed himself. “The road is very dangerous.” He glanced up at the sky. “And maybe the rains will come.”

“Bollocks,” Grace muttered.

He probably preferred the easier run to the train station and had settled on Zapata as a bogeyman. But she had made up her mind to go and the Devil himself couldn't turn her around.

“I will pay you half the fare now, and half when we return to Cuernavaca.”

He nodded, pocketed the
pesos,
and helped her aboard.

The road had deteriorated since the last time Grace traveled it, but the carriage made it almost as far as the river. The sky had clouded over and thunder growled along the horizon when the driver pulled onto a level stretch of ground and looped the reins around the brake handle. He climbed down and trotted around to unfold the rickety steps. He held out a hand to steady Grace's descent.

She straightened her hat, pinned it back in place, and surveyed the rough trail ahead.

“V
ámanos, señor.
Let's go.”

“I'm very sorry, but I cannot accompany you,
señora.
”

“Why not?”

With a look of regret almost genuine, he patted the battered side of the old victoria. “I must guard the coach. You know what they say. ‘Temptation makes the thief.'”

“‘It takes a thief to know one,'” Grace muttered in English.

She hiked up her skirts and set out for the bridge. She stopped in the middle of it and looked over the side. The river was higher than she had ever seen it, swollen by the runoff of the rains in the mountains. She took a deep breath and started up the tree-covered slope to the village perched along the canyon's rim.

Thirsty and dusty, she trudged the last few meters to the top of the cliff. She leaned on her umbrella to wait for her breath to catch up with her. The many fruit trees and the bougainvillea flowers cascading over the courtyard walls disguised the destruction. The impact of what Grace saw took several heartbeats to register.

Many of the houses had blackened walls. Broken roof tiles and burnt thatch lay on the ground around them. The charred ends of ceiling beams jutted like splintered bones from collapsed roofs.

The narrow streets were empty of people, but littered with evidence of them—torn baskets and sleeping mats, broken crockery, a baby's hammock. Gardens had been trampled, adobe ovens smashed, grain cribs torn apart. A dead chicken floated in the village fountain.

Grace wanted to make haste back to where the victoria waited, but she would not leave without trying to locate José and Serafina. Her heart pounded as she walked down the center of the main street. She was afraid to shatter the fragile silence by calling out, as if doing so would summon back what ever evil had visited here.

She was relieved to reach the Perez house without incident and to find it intact. She pushed open the gate. Serafina swept the bare earth of the courtyard every day, but now leaves littered it. Grace called out to them. No one answered.

Lightning flared. Grace jumped when a crash of thunder followed it. The first large drops of rain landed on her hat and shoulders like big wet kisses. She took cover inside.

The two small rooms were empty. She held her palm close to the ashes of the open hearth. They were cold, but otherwise the house looked as if José and Serafina had just left and would return soon.

She tried to think of an explanation for the attack. The most likely culprits were bandits. Rebels burned haciendas now and then, but she couldn't believe Zapata would turn on his own people. If federal troops had done this by mistake, a few words with Rubio would clear it up. Maybe his soldiers would help repair the houses. Maybe the government would issue an apology.

Grace heard voices outside and went to the door. “José!” she called. “What happened here?”

But neither of the men who came through the gate was José. They both had on the grimy, ill-fitting khakis of the federal army. They wore no shoes and looked malnourished. They had the mahogany-brown faces and opaque eyes of
indios
. Over their shoulders they carried coarse hempen satchels. Grace pegged them as foragers.

She doubted they understood Spanish but that was all she had to work with. “Where is your captain?”

Neither of them responded with so much as the rise of an eyebrow. One of them carried a shovel. He began digging in the dirt of the floor.

Not foragers, Grace thought. Looters. She couldn't imagine what treasure they expected to find here, but then, when one was as poor as an alley cat, treasure was a relative concept.

The digger's comrade got Grace's attention by leveling his bayonet at her. She stood as tall as possible under the low ceiling, and brandished her umbrella. She felt as much foolish as frightened. Where was his commanding officer? Where were the troops?

She switched to English. “Don't be a bloody ass. General Rubio is a friend of mine. Harm me and he will hang you.” She put one hand on her throat and pantomimed choking.

He kept advancing, crowding her toward the doorway to the inner room. Grace could smell months' accumulation of sweat and the stench of
pulque
. She tasted bile in the back of her throat.

Now would be a good time to call for help, but when she tried her voice had deserted her. By now hailstones were drumming so loudly on the terra-cotta tiles of the roof that no one would hear her anyway. Rico. She screamed it silently. Rico.

The drunken soldier seemed to exist at the other end of a telescope. Grace could see the coarse weave of his tunic and the crude eagles engraved on the pot-metal buttons. She noticed the crumbs in his bushy mustache and the black crescents of dirt under his long fingernails.

Time stopped. Grace couldn't move. She couldn't speak. She couldn't believe any of this.

What flushed her out of the briar patch of her bewilderment was a sonorous clang. As the soldier pitched forward the look of surprise that crossed his face was probably the most emotion he had shown in his life. Grace stepped aside to give him a clear trajectory to earth. He was so thin he made landfall with only a modest thud. Grace could tell from the caved-in back of his skull and the blood beginning to pool under his face that he wouldn't get up.

A teen aged boy stood in the patch of air he had just vacated. A faded serape covered all of him except for the bottoms of a pair of canvas trousers tied with hemp cords at the ankles. The serape filled the room with the aroma of wet wool. His big sombrero hung at his back. The shovel with which he had dispatched Grace's assailant was the same one the other soldier had been using in his hunt for buried treasure. He threw it aside

“
Tlazocamati
. Thank you.” Grace knew that much Nahuatl.

The boy ignored her as he rifled the dead man's pockets. He stripped off the bandolier and picked up the army-issue bolt-action Mauser and bayonet. The other soldier had had his throat neatly cut. The boy stopped to collect that man's weapons, too, and roll them in a sleeping mat. He shouldered the mat, stepped over the second body, pulled on his hat, and headed outside where the hail had become a steady downpour. He turned in the doorway and gestured for Grace to follow him.

Grace didn't want to seem ungrateful, but she had no intention of going with him. She edged around the bodies, opened her umbrella and slid it sideways through the narrow door frame.

The boy turned left at the front gate. Grace turned right. On wobbly legs, she headed back the way she had come. She glanced over her shoulder and saw, with relief, that her rescuer wasn't inclined to chase after her.