The Wild Girl (19 page)

“I am sorry, Señor Ned,” he said. “I thought she was going to bite you.”

“She’s just a girl, Jesus,” I said. “Look at her. She’s just a scared kid.”

“She is a wild Apache Indian,” he insisted.
“Ella está
loca.”

“I’m going to put this blanket around you now,” I said to the girl. “Jesus, tell her that in Spanish. Maybe she’ll understand.”

Jesus stepped tentatively up to the bars.

“Tell her I just want to help her. That no one’s going to hurt her.”

“El gringo dice que él desea ayudarla,”
the boy said in an oddly formal tone of voice.
“No la va danar.”

“You sound like a damn bill collector, Jesus,” I said. “Can’t you try to be a little friendlier?”

“El desea ser su amigo, y para ayudarla,”
said the boy.
“El no la va a danar.”

I couldn’t tell if the girl understood him or not, but very slowly and deliberately I reached the blanket out to her again, and again the sound arose from her chest, a low warning growl. But this time she allowed me to drape the blanket over her shoulder.

“Keep talking, kid,” I said. “I think maybe she understands you.”

“The Apaches have always lived in our country,” the sheriff said. “They steal our women and babies. In this way, many of them have learned our language.”

As the boy spoke, I slid the blanket around her shoulder. “There, see? Nothing to be afraid of.”

Now the girl huddled under the blanket in the corner of the cell, but her eyes seemed to be losing their focus again.

“Crank the generator up,” I said to Jesus. And then I made another negative of the girl, the one I think the newspaper will run under my headline:

WILD APACHE GIRL CAPTURED!

BAVISPE SONORA, May 13—Conclusive proof of the existence of the bronco Apaches in Mexico’s remote Sierra Madre was produced yesterday when a wild Apache girl was captured in the mountains near Bavispe, Sonora.

The Apache girl, age approximately 14 years, was taken prisoner by an American contract predator hunter named Billy Flowers. Flowers said that he was tracking a mountain lion when his hound dogs treed the girl. The American brought her into the town of Bavispe on Saturday morning. However, before she could be turned over to the custody of Sheriff Enrique Cardenas, she attacked and wounded a local boy, 12-year-old Jorge Ibarra. The Ibarra boy suffered severe bite wounds to his neck and shoulders. He is being treated for his injuries by the town physician, Dr. Hector Ramirez.

In a separate incident, the Apache girl bit the village priest, Father Raul Aguilar, whose wounds also required medical care.

Dr. Ramirez examined the Apache girl, whose name remains unknown, and found her to be suffering from dehydration and starvation. For her own protection and for the protection of town residents, she is presently being cared for in the Bavispe town jail. “She is very wild,” said Sheriff Cardenas. “She is like a dangerous wild animal. However, we are doing everything possible to make her comfortable.”

And now it is well past midnight. I have stayed up late to print several of my negatives, and to record this long, disturbing day. The prints are fine; one of the girl, in particular, is excellent. (Not the cleansed and blanketed version, either, the negative of which has already been flown to Douglas, along with the piece I wrote, which will both satisfy the readers of the
Daily Dispatch
as well as ingratiate me with the sheriff, who will be pleased to see his name so respectfully in print; I may need his goodwill again.) But here in this one perfect print is the naked truth only the camera is capable of telling. As I look at it, I see the girl as vividly as I did earlier in the flesh, perhaps, oddly, even more vividly, as if the depth and focus and definition provided by the camera lens and the lights are somehow more real, more specific than real life.
La niña bronca,
this slight starving creature curled in a fetal position on the stone floor of the Mexican jail cell, the shadows of the iron bars falling like a convict’s striped uniform across her naked body. I cannot get the girl out of my mind; when I close my eyes the image of her continues to haunt me. I understand that this is how she will die, that my camera cannot save her, that all it can do is to record this awful truth. The doctor gives her five days to live if she does not eat or drink. What good then is a photograph if it cannot save a girl’s life? And what good then is the truth?

14 MAY, 1932

In the foothills of the Sierra Madre

It wasn’t exactly a jailbreak, but we have “sprung”
la niña bronca,
as they say in Chicago gangster parlance, and I make this entry from our first night’s camp at a spring in the foothills of the Sierra Madre.

Early the next morning after my session with the girl, I went to Margaret’s tent to show her my prints. Her reaction to the images and to my story about the girl’s imprisonment was equal parts horror and anger, some of which she took out on me.

“
Goddammit,
Ned,” she said. “This is monstrous. This child needs help. Why didn’t you tell me about her? Why didn’t you take me with you?”

“I tried to, Mag,” I said. “I sent Jesus for you, but you’d already gone up with Spider.”

“So why didn’t you come see me when I got back?” she asked. “Where were you during dinner?”

“I was busy writing my piece,” I said, “and then I was up late printing.”

“What do you think this is, Neddy,” she said, flicking the print with the back of her fingers, “a fucking journalistic exercise? This is a human being. She needs help.”

“Calm down, will you, Mag?” I said. “Do you think I don’t know that? I saw her, remember? I did what I could.”

“I want to see her myself,” she said. “And I want to talk to the sheriff. We need to get this girl to a hospital.”

“Before we go back there, let me make a suggestion,” I offered. “Why don’t we take Joseph Valor with us? He could communicate with the girl.”

This seemed to calm Margaret a bit. “Yeah, okay, that’s a good idea. At least Joseph can speak her language. I’m sorry to holler at you, Neddy, but
good God . . .
” She looked at the photograph again, tears welling up in her eyes. “How were you even able to
take
this picture?”

“It’s my job, Mag,” I said.

A low fog, not yet burned off by the sun, clung to the river as Margaret and I walked down to the Apaches’ camp. Other than to lead Colonel Carrillo and his men on their daily forays into the mountains, Joseph and Albert had kept very much to themselves since the arrival of the expedition in Bavispe. Because of the Mexicans’ instinctive fear and hatred of the Apaches, the scouts had been forbidden even from going into the village alone. I’d hardly seen them myself, and Margaret had probably spent more time with them than anyone else. She had been down to their camp several times to interview the old man about traditional Apache culture for her doctoral thesis, and this time when we arrived, Joseph greeted her warmly. I couldn’t help but notice that even Albert’s aversion to the White Eyes seemed to be somewhat pacified in Margaret’s presence. It was obvious to me that like all the other men, they had both fallen in love with her.

“Being locked up in a jail is not a thing understood by the People,” Joseph said when we showed him the photograph. “If the girl chooses to die, there is nothing that can be done for her.”

“We can get her to a hospital,” Margaret said. “We could fly her to Douglas.”

“You say she is afraid now,” said the old man. “Think how she would feel about flying in your airplane. Nor will your hospital save her life. She wishes only to go home.”

“At least come down to the jail with us, Joseph,” Margaret said. “Just to hear someone speaking her own language might give her hope.”

“Hope of what?” asked Albert.

“Hope of living,” Margaret answered.

It was Sunday and churchgoers were coming in from the outlying villages and ranches for mass. But word of the capture of
la niña bronca
had clearly already spread through the Bavispe River valley, and traffic on the main road to town was particularly heavy that morning; a steady stream of people, most on foot, others on horses, mules, and burros, some in buggies and wagons,
hacendados
and peons alike, entire families, as if on a pilgrimage. Margaret says that the Apaches have been the bogeymen of northern Sonoran culture for generations, that in the old days the villagers here believed Geronimo to be the devil, come to punish them for their sins. More recently he has been replaced in their legends by the bronco Apache known as Indio Juan. It was Indio Juan, the Mexicans say, who was responsible for the Huerta boy’s kidnapping, and who continues to terrorize the region. And now that they had a real live Apache in their possession, everyone wished to see her.

The plaza was already crowded and an even longer line had formed again in front of the
jugzado
. Nervous glances were cast at Joseph and Albert as we walked by; the locals knew about the Apache scouts camped on the river outside town, and now there was finger-pointing and whispering and some of the older people crossed themselves.

“Look at that,” I said, astonished that anyone could fear this elfin little old man. “They’re afraid of you.”

“In the old days we used to joke that Yusen put the Mexicans on earth for the convenience of the People,” Joseph said. “To raise horses, mules, and cattle for us, to provide wives for our warriors and slaves for our wives. It is true that I killed many Mexicans when I was young.” The old man turned his palms up. “They can still see the blood of their ancestors on my hands.”

This time when we went to the door of the
jugzado,
the sheriff refused us entry. “You must wait in line like everyone else,” he said curtly.

“I demand to see that girl right now,” Margaret said.

“Mag, I don’t really think that’s the right approach here,” I warned.

The sheriff looked hard at Margaret. “You Americans always think that you can come into Mexico and make demands,” said the sheriff. “But I am not your servant, señorita. You are a guest in my country, in my village, and in my jail. You will wait your turn in line.”

“Sheriff, let’s say we offered you a larger contribution to the town jail fund,” I said. “Could you possibly let us in now to see the girl?”

The sheriff smiled benevolently. “Ah, you are a very polite young man,” he said, nodding. “For you I will make such a special arrangement.”

“Thank you.”

“However as you can see for yourself,” the sheriff continued, “we have many people who have come here today to view
la niña bronca,
and some have come from very far away. Thus you will not be allowed to go inside the cell today. And you may only stay to view her for the same period of time allotted everyone else.”

“Understood.”

The deputy led us back to the cell area. He raised his lantern up to the bars to cast a faint yellow light on the girl. As when I had left her the day before, she lay still in the corner of the cell, curled again in a fetal position.

“Oh my God,”
Margaret whispered. “Talk to her Joseph.
Please.
”

Joseph began speaking to the girl in his low, chanting voice, and as he did so, he squatted on his haunches and from the pouch he wore at his waist, he extracted a pinch of fine yellow powder, which he held through the bars and sprinkled over her.

“Es prohibido acercarse a la celda,”
the deputy said sharply.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Hoddentin,” Albert answered. “The powder of the tule plant. It’s a sacred substance to Apaches.”

Now from his pouch the old man removed a small object that I could not make out, and he reached again through the bars and pressed it into the girl’s closed fist.

“Sal de aquí, viejo,”
ordered the deputy, and he grabbed Joseph by the collar and yanked him roughly away from the cell.

Albert stepped up threateningly to the deputy. “Leave my grandfather alone,” he said. “He’s an old man.”

“It’s all right, Albert,” I said, taking his arm. “We don’t need any trouble.”

“El tiempo ya paso,”
said the deputy.
“Ustedes deben salir ahora.”

“But we just got here,” Margaret protested.

“Ustedes deben salir ahora,”
the man repeated, herding us back out.

“That girl is dying,” Margaret said angrily, “and they’re selling admission tickets to see her.”

“Keep your mouth shut, Mag,” I said. “You’re not going to help her by pissing off the sheriff.”

Outside again, the morning sun had burned off the last of the night fog over the river and seemed harshly unforgiving after the dank light of the
jugzado.
A strangely discordant atmosphere of festivity prevailed in the plaza. Vendors had set up stands and were doing a brisk business in food and refreshments. The church bells rang, announcing the second morning mass.