TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (24 page)

For me it was hardly a decision. It was inevitable.

“I have nothing else to do. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” he said, chuckling. “This isn’t California. This is the asshole of the Yoo-nited States.” And he waved his slender hand out the window at all that lot of piss-ass nothing, which was to be my new home.

“And if I have a conscience,

let it sink me.”

I heard the steady crack of Rodolfo Fierro’s pistol. I saw the mass of prisoners slipping in their own blood. Afterward I listened every night to their screams. What could I have done? I asked the question a hundred times and received no answer. In his brutish way, Fierro had carried out revolutionary justice. He had said so, and it was true. I could have shot him and Dozal both. The price of interference would have been my life; I would have gone to an inglorious death as a man who refused an order. A martyr, and not even that, for martyrs need witnesses to their martyrdom. The witnesses would have died too, for Pancho Villa himself had pronounced the sentence.

I told no one but Rosa. On those bad nights when I couldn’t sleep she rubbed my back with coconut oil, and in the day she bathed the shrapnel wound on my leg with some desert herbs and then coated it with powdered alum. Her hands were gentle.

“There was nothing you could have done,
mi capitán. “

“I keep saying that too, Rosa. But I was there. I saw it, just as I saw what they did at La Perla. But this time
—we
did it.”

“Fierro did it.”

“And I helped.”

“Kill him, Tomás. You’ll feel better about it.”

“No, I won’t. It won’t change what happened.”

“He is evil.” She echoed my thoughts.

I hadn’t been born to comprehend Rodolfo Fierro. I didn’t then, and I don’t now. How could a man exist who was purely evil? If there was a God, how could He create such a man? And if there wasn’t a God who could be held responsible, how could men tolerate that bestial existence among them?

But Fierro’s death wouldn’t purge me of my sin. Perhaps one day I would face a moment—an ordeal, a choice—that would allow that. I was young. I had to believe that life offered such chances. It does, of course. But they have to be seen, and seized; and you dare not fail.

The revolution didn’t grind to a halt because one of its lesser captains was sunk in a bog of remorse. Villa was gathering momentum, and in November the Northern Division attacked again. He organized an elite force of cavalry called the Dorados—the Golden Ones—equipping each man with two good horses, two Colt pistols and a 7-mm carbine, and giving the overall command of the unit to Candelario.

Torreón had been stripped of everything useful. Villa decided he couldn’t afford to defend it when the Federals still held Chihuahua City and the gateway of Juárez; we needed every man.

So we abandoned La Laguna and headed north on the forty captured railway trains, our horses in the open stockcars, with Villa riding in a caboose that he had painted fire-engine red and converted into his traveling divisional headquarters. Esperanza and Juana Torres sewed red curtains for the windows and matching counterpanes for the foldaway bunks—the best of friends now that both had the status of wife. The rest of our men rode in the passenger cars and on top of them as well, firing rifles into the air or taking potshots at unlucky coyotes. Women camped on the rocking platforms, building fires of twigs and cow chips to bake their tortillas. A few young soldiers slung hammocks between the wheels of the train as it chugged north from Torreón, smoking marijuana and sleeping just a few feet from the steel rails. A spirit of casual madness had already begun to infect the army. Death was always a companion on the revolutionary journey, and what did it matter how it took you by the hand?

Our trains halted ten miles from Chihuahua City. Rosa waited with the rest of the women in the nearby pueblo called El Charco.

“Don’t worry,
mi capitán,
“ she said, when we parted on the eve of battle. “I will be all right, and so will you.”

I smiled at her. “You’re sure?”

“Yes,” she said solemnly, gazing at me with her clear child’s eyes. “I would feel it if you were in danger. On the morning that my husband was due to die, I woke with a fever. It only lasted an hour. I had dreamed of blood pouring from the earth. So I knew, but I was afraid to tell him. But I would not be afraid to tell you, and if I ever dream again, or have that fever, I will not let you go to fight.”

Her belief was so strong, even if it was only a child’s faith, that it gave me a kind of faith too. At first I didn’t think too much about it, but I know now, in some arcane way that I could never fully explain and certainly never justify, that her faith protected me.

I threw myself into the battle without thought of losing life or limb. I was brave again—although, after what had happened in Torreón, it gave me no solace.

Our assault on Chihuahua City was bloody and fruitless; the Federal artillery outnumbered and outgunned us. Villa himself was nearly blown to bits by an exploding shell that killed two of his doctors. Could we lose? I had thought after Torreón that we were an unstoppable juggernaut, that Villa’s careful organization and rallying genius would prevail over any kind of defense.

After three days of useless fighting and heavy losses, he assembled his generals in the red-painted railway caboose. “This can’t go on,” he said grimly. “Our left has been shattered. Our right is about to cave in, and our center is pinned down. But I have a plan.”

The bulk of the Division, he explained, would entrain for Jiménez, a hundred fifty miles to the southeast, with all the women and children. The Dorados and one mounted brigade, under his personal command, would ride that night to the nearby railway junction of El Norte.

“We’ll steal a train there and take it straight up to Juárez,” he said to the generals. “When I was in prison I read something like this in a book. It was about a revolution in ancient Greece, which is in Europe. They built a big wooden horse and hid a battalion inside it, which they somehow got into the city held by the government troops. Then they jumped out and took the city by storm. The revolution triumphed. That’s how it will be in Juárez, except we haven’t got time to build such a horse. So we’ll use a train.”

Calixto Contreras muttered that it broke all the rules of warfare that he understood. Juan Medina said, “My opinion is that we won’t get farther than Samalayuca before the Federals bombard the shit out of us. How can we possibly get the train into Juárez?”

“You’ll see,” Villa replied cordially. “Any more questions?”

I said goodbye to Rosa before she boarded the southbound train with Yvette and Marie-Thérése and all the other women. I asked her if she’d had any dreams lately, the past few nights, and she blushed and bit her thumb, like a little girl.

“Yes,” she said finally, raising her head. “But not the bad one again. I dreamed of a child. I don’t know if it was
hembra
or
macho.
You held it in your arms.”

My heart seemed to slow a bit. “You’re not—”

“No,
mi capitán.
I am not. Go to Juárez and don’t worry. It will go well for you there.”

“You mean we’ll take the city?”

“I think so. But more, it will be good for you. Don’t ask me what I mean. If I knew, I would say. I will wait for you in Jiménez. Go well, Tomás,” she said gravely.

“And stay well, Rosa.”

I didn’t think anymore about the idea of a child, not for a long time. It was a complication I didn’t need in my already complicated life, and the easiest way to deal with the possibility was to banish it.

That same cold and windy night, the Dorados and one mounted brigade took a wide sweep around Chihuahua City. Bundled in serapes up to the eyeballs, the men looked again like a herd of traveling toadstools.

Candelario rode next to me. “Do you understand all this, Tomás?”

“Not much,” I said, shivering.

“Do you know of these Greeks?”

“I remember they got licked pretty good by the Romans.”

A coal train chugged into the yard from Juárez at one o’clock that afternoon. Villa ordered Candelario to take it, with instructions to shoot any soldiers that might be aboard but to spare the engine crew. At the same time Villa and twenty men stormed the El Norte railway office.

“Don’t shoot the telegraph operator,” he ordered. “But don’t let him get any messages out.”

Six Redflaggers were surprised in the office and shot before they could get to their rifles. Villa quickly ordered their bodies dragged to a back room. The telegraph operator, an old man who had been drinking pulque and eating a plate of enchiladas, crossed himself and prepared to die. But Villa clapped the hot barrel of his pistol against the man’s gray temple.

“You can finish your meal later, señor. Right now, wire Juárez in your regular code. Our telegrapher here will watch”—and he nodded at me. “He understands English too, so if you add anything or don’t follow my instructions to the comma, I’ll splash your brains from here to the wall … Now, what is the name of the conductor on the coal train?”

“Velasquez,” the telegrapher whispered.

“You’re positive?”

The old man nodded vigorously, sliding his tongue over dry lips. “Good. Wire this. ‘DERAILED. NO LINE OPEN TO CHIHUAHUA CITY. EVERYTHING BURNED BY FRANCISCO VILLA. SEND SECOND ENGINE AND ORDERS. VELASQUEZ.’ Have you got that?”

“Yes, Señor Villa.”

“You know I’ve got a nervous trigger finger. Make sure you send the message exactly as I dictated.”

A few minutes later the key began to click rapidly as the Juárez railroad yard answered. “NO ENGINES AVAILABLE. FIND TOOLS. ADVISE AND WAIT FOR ORDERS WHEN BACK ON RAILS.”

“Tomás, stay here with two men,” the chief said. “Let this old fellow finish his lunch. If he tries anything funny, shoot him.” And he winked at me with one bloodshot eye.

He went outside into the hot sun, ordered all the coal dumped from the train and loaded his brigade of nearly two thousand men and all their horses aboard. He worked like a coal heaver, kicking mules in the belly, shoving horses up the rickety inclined boards. Dust boiled up in the railroad yard, the air so gritty you could hardly see. It took more than an hour, but Villa came back dripping sweat, black with coal dust, jubilant. This time he brought Calixto Contreras and Juan Medina with him, also begrimed from head to boots.

“Now, my friends! If luck is with us, you’ll see how it works.” He turned to the telegrapher. “Send this. ‘ON TRACKS. NO ROADBED OR WIRE SOUTH. BIG CLOUD OF DUST ON HORIZON. LOOKS LIKE VILLISTAS. VELASQUEZ.’ “

No sooner had the man finished tapping the key than a message came clicking right back.

“BACK INTO JUAREZ IF POSSIBLE. WIRE AT EACH MAJOR STATION.”

“Back into Juarez? Go backwards?” Villa groaned. “I don’t remember the Greeks doing it that way. Well, if we must, we must.”

Fierro, a railroad engineer during part of his pre-revolutionary life, took charge of the train, although he admitted he wasn’t too sure of himself traveling backwards. That separated him from me by at least half a dozen railway cars, and I didn’t complain.

We chugged that way through the barren desert toward the north, and everybody went to sleep stretched out in the coal dust, exhausted from the night’s ride and the day’s vigil, until we reached the first station of El Sauz, festering under the afternoon sun. Candelario and a squad of Dorados took care of the few Federals who lounged around in the railway office, and then we telegraphed: “IN EL SAUZ. SEND ORDERS. VELASQUEZ.”

Juárez answered: “PROCEED NORTH. TRACK CLEAR FOR YOU ALL THE WAY.”

We did the same in Ojo de Laguna, El Mocho and La Candelaria, all through the afternoon and evening.

Each time the reply came back: “PROCEED NORTH. TRACK CLEAR.”

The chief kept grinning. “These people couldn’t be nicer to us. Do you suppose they’ll have a brass band at the station, to welcome their men who escaped the clutches of Pancho Villa?”

At Samalayuca, only twenty miles south of Juárez, Villa sent his last wire and issued his final orders, deploying the brigade for a three-pronged assault on the garrison.

A few minutes past midnight of November 15 the train bumped its way backwards into Juárez railroad station. The Federal garrison was asleep, and the Redflaggers were whooping it up in the town. Wasn’t Villa getting his mustache tweaked in Chihuahua City? Before they knew it, two thousand gray-faced cavalry were in their midst, and they were prisoners of the revolution. I was with our boys when we raided the gambling casino of the famous El Touché, scooping up $150,000 worth of dollars and pesos from the stunned croupiers.

Touché himself cried, “Who are you people?” He couldn’t recognize anyone, because we were covered with coal dust from the boxcars.

“Get me a basin of water,” one of the raiders, a stoutish fellow, commanded, and a croupier did so as the pistol waved in his direction. The man scrubbed himself, then showed his red teeth in a fine smile. “Francisco Villa, at your service, you buzzards.”

At three o’clock in the morning the battle for Juárez was wrapped up in a neat ribbon, ready for the history books. We had a port of entry and supply base. We hadn’t lost a single man. Rosa’s prediction had proved right, and I decided that Pancho Villa could have licked Hannibal and Napoleon and still have had something left over to take care of William Tecumseh Sherman.

I slept for a few hours on the green felt of a craps table in Touché’s and woke at dawn, stiff-limbed, and hungry. I had some fried eggs and chicory coffee in the street, but the sight of the Indian women behind their charcoal fires brought an image of Rosa to mind, and suddenly I wasn’t quite so eager to cross the Stanton Street Bridge and pound on Hannah Sommerfeld’s door. One look into my eyes, I thought, and all would be clear. Wouldn’t she instantly see my faithlessness?

O heaven, were man but constant, he were perfect! Oh, faithless dog! Oh, wretch!

Oh, damn!

I knocked instead, that evening, on the front door of the Mix house on Noble Street, and it opened almost immediately. My mother peered out at me in the dusk with a frightened little smile. She looked well—gray-haired, with bright eyes, a few fresh lines etched into her forehead. She wore her familiar red-checked kitchen apron, and from inside the house I could smell hot tomato paste wafting toward the street.