The Children of Sanchez (68 page)

That morning, before seven, we sentenced each other to death by agreeing that anybody seen talking to a guard should be killed. What a day that was, with everybody looking this way and that. In the evening, we lined up to go back to the galleries and for some reason, we were left outside. We thought they had found out. My heart was beating like mad and the Cock was ready to kill the first guard who came near. But we had been delayed because they were fixing the lights in our gallery.

When they let us in, we immediately began to dig. We got below the wall and to the other side. The Cover was the first one to go through.
Huy!
we were all jubilant. The Cock said, “Watch it, Otelo, these guys will panic and everybody will want to go at the same time. This has to be done calmly so that no one gets wise.” It was a hard job to calm them down, because each one wanted to be first.

There I was, saying, “O.K., go ahead. Next. Next.” Then I said, “Nothing doing. You’re not going to leave me behind. It’s my turn now.” We entered the hole, head first, face down, and arms forward, to be able to pass under the wall. I got in all right, but went with my arms down and got stuck midway. There I was, struggling, when I felt someone grab my foot. “
Ay
, dear God, they’ve found us out!” But no, it was a comrade who put his head against my feet and pushed up. I never knew who it was, but if it hadn’t been for him, I would not have gotten out, nor would he.

On the other side, we were faced with a gigantic door. We fumbled with the lock, until an expert lockpicker among us opened it. We had agreed that we would walk out as if nothing was happening. But a lot of good it did. As soon as the door was open, it was as though they’d heard the starting bugle at the race track. They went out like a bunch of horses, and I wasn’t far behind. The bombardment began when I was only two blocks away. What a racket they raised, shooting and blowing whistles. Then a bullet went by me. I said, “Now run,
compadres
, otherwise we’re done for.”

One prisoner shouted, “
Ay
, they’ve given it to me! They got me,” and he fell. Me, the hero, I go back. It wasn’t my intention to be a hero, but I went back to pick him up. “No, Otelo. Keep going. Don’t be a jerk! I can’t go any more.” The bullet hit him in the back and that boy died in my arms. “Well, may you rest in peace and forgive
me,” and I took off again. The prisoner in front of me fell. I turned a corner and Moisés, the prison barber, grabbed me and put his scissors against my throat. “Wait up, Moisés,” and I held his hand.

“
Ay
, Otelo. A bit more and I would have killed you. I thought you were a cop.”

“No,
compadre
, let’s get going.”

We ran through the night, past the railroad tracks and to the mountains. That was our salvation. Up we went, with police and guards all over the place, and lights going from one side to another. We ran into a briar patch,
ay
, my God! did we get full of thorns! We had to get out on hands and knees, clearing a path with a stick. When we were through and way ahead, we stopped to pull the thorns out of one another.

We walked through the whole state of Veracruz, for several days and nights. It was the rainy season and there was a downpour, of the kind that only happens around there, really torrential. We gathered sugar-cane leaves to make raincoats, but they were of no use at all. So we curled up back to back, shivering with cold.

We kept from starving by eating fruit along the road. There were lots of mango trees, and bananas,
guayaba
, oranges, lemons,
malta
, all kinds of fruit. Moisés had four or five
pesos
on him and in the first town we hit, we bought a drink. After that, we walked day and night.

At the entrance of one town, we stopped to make ourselves some
huaraches
out of a strip of rubber tire. Our feet were swollen and bleeding, and were the part of us that had suffered most. I was sitting with my back to the town, and Moisés was facing it, so that he could see who was leaving and I could see who was coming in.

We were cutting the thongs when all at once Moisés said, “This is it, boy. Don’t move or turn, but be ready for anything.” He passed me his scissors and he held his razor, on guard, see? “It looks like they got us. Here come the police.”

Out of the corner of my eye I could see two cops and two armed civilians coming. They passed right by, saying, “Good afternoon,
señores
.” We answered, “Good afternoon,
señores
.” “
Adiós … adiós
.” We lost sight of them around a curve in the road. A few minutes later, I heard the sound of a carbine being cocked.

“Be careful,” I said. “They are going to ambush us. We’d better get out of here.” As we started, we heard the first shot. But the shots weren’t meant for us. The men were just target shooting at a tree.
Ay!
How were we to know? My heart went back to its normal place, because, to tell the truth, I was really scared.

We walked all the way to Oaxaca, where Moisés had a friend whom he had once worked for. We found him shucking corn on a machine and he gave both of us jobs … and, what I liked more, plenty of food. I had shucked corn before, but there I learned to plant pineapple. I was soon planting eight hundred to a thousand plants a day and they paid nine
pesos
per thousand plants.

I meant to stay until I had enough money to go back to Mexico City, but it didn’t work out like that, because of the heat and the mosquitoes. Those damned mosquitoes gave me such a beating that I had to surrender. I was like a cobblestone street, with bites all over my body. I just worked two weeks and then I said to myself, “It’s time for you to go to Mexico City now, Roberto.”

To do that, I went back to Veracruz. Well, when you drink you meet all kinds of people. Your tongue loosens with the ones you should least speak to. I was drinking with a boy I didn’t know and we began to talk about our exploits. Since I was as much of an adventurer as he, and without money, he invited me to help him on a little job he was planning. He had studied the house and knew where the money was, and how to get in, and everything. All I had to do was follow instructions … he did the stealing, I was the lookout.

He got thirty thousand
pesos
in cash, some watches, some rings and a pistol. We divided it on the beach … my share was 14,700 … and then we each went our way. I heard later that they caught him and were looking for me because he sang to the police. I boarded a freighter which took me to Guatemala.

We arrived in Chetumal, on the border, and right off, I got a job on a coffee plantation. I worked during the day, and in the evenings I invited everyone I knew to go with me to the cabarets. For a month I went to bordellos and cabarets, treating half the world to drinks and women. And even though I always went to cabarets of the lowest category, I spent over a thousand
pesos
in one night. The women would charge fifty, one hundred, seventy-five
pesos
, and I treated everybody.

That was the way all my money went … well, not
my
money but the money I took from others. I’ve left thousands in places like that. I give you my word as a man and as a bum, that there have been some years in which I’ve thrown away fifteen or twenty thousand
pesos
.

When I was down to my last five thousand
pesos
, I took a boat back
to Veracruz. I had my doubts about that old boat and, as a matter of fact, it sank a short time ago and there were several deaths. From Veracruz to Mexico City, the easiest way is by train. Although I was a magnate with plenty of money in my pocket, I went my usual way for only fifty
centavos
.

What I always do is buy a
thirty
-centavo ticket for the first-class bus to the train station. Then, I buy a platform ticket for twenty
centavos
, so that I can get in where the trains are. I board the train and mix with the passengers. Once the train starts, I know they will check the tickets, so I go to the door of the coach and get between the cars and climb up to the roof.

To avoid suffering from the cold I go along the roofs until I get to the locomotive, which has a warm ventilator on top. It is safe and no one bothers you. Ask the man who knows, right? But sometimes I travel underneath the freight trains. They have rods down below, especially made for tramps, if you know what I mean. With a board across the rods, you can travel comfortably. That was how I went back that time.

I arrived in Mexico City at about seven in the morning and spent the whole day in the house waiting for my
papá
. Manuel and my sisters kept asking me questions, but I didn’t tell them anything until my father came home. He walked in, looking very serious.

“I’m back,
papá
.”

“When did you come?”

“Just today.”

“How did you go free?”

“Well, they found out it wasn’t my fault.” I told a lie, see, because I was never able to talk frankly to my father. “They decided it wasn’t my fault and they let me go.”

“Let’s see if you go to work now. You’re a grown-up man and you have to work seriously, not just a month or two and then rest for three.”

Unfortunately, that’s the way I have been. I worked at a job until I had some money in my pocket, and then I quit. That time, I didn’t even begin to look for work until I had spent my five thousand
pesos
with my friends. Then I went back to glass cutting, in a place that made fancy candelabras.

We did all the work by hand, cutting the crystal, shaping it and polishing. I was good enough to be a
maestro
, but I never wanted to
be anything but a worker, so as not to be over people or to have responsibility. I just wanted to do what I was told and to have a definite salary per week, and that would be the end of it. One of the good things about being a humble worker is having a clear conscience, being able to eat and sleep in tranquillity, with no one and nothing to bother you and no reason to reproach yourself for your behavior. And perhaps, because one is humble, one doesn’t get ambitious and covetous. One is satisfied with the hope that some day, through honest and productive labor, one can get out of the hole one is in.

It might have been possible to have started my own business and to improve economically, but by the time I got around to thinking of it, fine candelabra work had declined and the things were being mass produced. Besides, I lost my job because I got into a fight.

I was pretty drunk the day of the fight because it was the New Year. I don’t care for alcoholic drinks; whatever I drink, I don’t like, but there I am, hoisting them. Don’t ask! I have drunk everything. Well, from time immemorial, there has been a feud between the boys of the Casa Grande and the guys from the Street of the Bakers. When the fight broke out, three of them ganged up on me. I was putting up a good struggle when somebody slugged me from behind, one of the worst blows I’d ever gotten. I fell and got kicked in the ribs and legs. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t defend myself.

What made me madder than anything was that my Whole gang saw what was going on, and left me there to die. It is not an obligation, but lots of times I have mixed into fights to defend them. But not those guys! I was beaten up so badly in front of the boys and girls of the
vecindad
, that I couldn’t get over the shame of it. And by guys who were not known to be fighters!

Those boys were terribly worried, as they knew I always took revenge. Why, once I looked for a guy six months because he punched me when I was too drunk to fight back. He hid and sent his wife and mother-in-law to see where I was before he would step out of the house. He missed more than one day of work because I was waiting for him on the street corner. I had almost forgotten about him, when I met him at a saint’s day
fiesta
. When José saw me, he hugged the wall, trying to hide in a corner. Later he told me, “
Ay, Negrito
, when I saw you come in, I tell you man-to-man, they shrank up on me!”

He swore that if he had known who I was, he never would have dared punch me. To show me how sorry he was, he offered me a
Johnson lighter his wife had given him on his Saint’s Day. Then his wife and her whole family, people I have known since I was a kid, came and talked to me, and the upshot of it was that we were soon drinking beer with our arms around each other.

But it didn’t work out that way with the boys from the Street of the Bakers. After they had beaten me up, I didn’t drink anything but Alka-Seltzers and went to bed for a week to recover my strength so I could call them to account. Well, I did, and one of them got cut with my knife. It was an accident, because it really didn’t call for anything as drastic as that. It was just a scratch, but it was more the fuss he made. His whole family came at me and called the police.

Never in my life have I turned my back to an enemy but since I had had experience with the police, I took it on the lam. I thought, “Fights are also won by running.” That time I ended up in Texas, where I spent a few weeks.

By the time I learned that Antonia, my great love, was living with Francisco and had two kids with him, I didn’t care any more, My feeling for her had calmed down, though when I saw her at the Casa Grande once in a while, it still gave me great pleasure. Francisco was a no-good character who ran around with other women and who didn’t even give her daily expense money. My sister deserved something better.

But what hurt my soul and heart was to learn that Consuelo had taken a misstep and had left home. I had four sisters and not one of them has given me the joy and honor of seeing her married in a white dress. It is true that my father threw Consuelo out of the house, but my sister was intelligent enough to know that, as a woman, she should never have used that as an excuse to go off with … what’s-his-name. She wasn’t the only one my father had thrown out, because he did it to me, and especially to Manuel. But being a woman, she should have borne more and spoken to my father in a nice way, more like to a friend than to a father, and I believe he would have listened to her. So she had no right to blame him for what happened to her.