Rain of Gold

by Victor Villaseñor

  Six months later they came back with fifty men and their families. They worked like free men from sun to sun, building roads, houses and a small settlement on the knoll on which they’d camped that first night.

  The following year Don Pío brought his wife, Silveria, a woman of Indian and European breeding, and his three teenaged daughters. He built his home on the highest point on the knoll. He faced the front door of their casa to the east so he and his family could give witness to the miracle of each new day.

  The years passed by and Don Pío was fast at work on a schoolhouse for his children when word came that his great friend, Benito Juárez, had died.

  Don Pío mourned Don Benito’s death as if his own father had died. The great Benito Juárez had been Don Pío’s inspiration of what a man could be: strong, serious, respectful and, yet gentle, good and loyal.

  Years later, Don Pío was made the marshal of the whole region by the new presidente, Don Porfirio. It saddened Don Pío’s heart when he and his Rurales had to hunt down good men, ex-soldiers, who’d refused to settle down into the hard task of earning their daily bread. In the years that followed, Don Pío and his Rurales became so feared that bandit groups would rather ride a hundred miles around them than come through their mountainous area of Los Altos de Jalisco.

  Don Pío’s daughters grew, matured, married and had children. He tried to find time to finish the schoolhouse for his grandchildren, but he just didn’t seem to find time. And yet, the years were kind to Don Pío and his beautiful wife, Silveria. They grew old together and every morning took their first cup of hot, spicy chocolate with the rising sun on the terrace of their home so they could watch their grandchildren on their way to work in the fields.

  But then, just before the turn of the century, Don Pío was asked to do something by his old friend, Don Porfirio, that he didn’t think was just: to become a guard for the rich hacendados down in the valley. Don Pío refused and was relieved of his duties as a marshal.

  New lawmen were brought into the area by Don Porfirio’s people. These lawmen didn’t work the land with their hands. They weren’t married. They were from other regions and knew nothing of the local people. They wore beautiful uniforms, rode great horses and would shoot a boy for just taking a few corn cobs from a field to eat.

  Then came word that Don Porfirio had proclaimed himself the permanent President General of Mexico. He wasn’t going to allow any serious contenders to run against him anymore. Don Pío thought his old friend had gone too far, but still he said nothing.

  The years passed, the injustices grew, and finally a grandson of one of Don Pío’s ex-soldiers was shot for cutting a little alfalfa in a field for his horse. So Don Pío saddled up to go to see this man, El Presidente, with whom he’d fought, shoulder-to-shoulder, for over two decades.

  The day that Don Pío and a dozen of his old compadres-in-arms rode down the mountain with their sons and grandsons, the whole settlement came out to watch them go. And his oldest daughter, Margarita, who had married Juan Villaseñor, brought out her two youngest boys, Juan and Domingo, to say goodbye to their beloved grandfather.

  Domingo was eleven years old and Juan was six. Don Pío kissed each boy, holding him to his heart. Little Juan got the full smell of his grandfather and felt his hard, white beard against his cheek. Then Juan watched his abuelito ride off on his stallion with the four white stockings.

  It had been more than thirty years since Don Pío had been to the capitol. Arriving at the outskirts of the city, Don Pío and his men were stopped by a hundred, well-equipped soldiers in beautiful uniforms who said that no dirty Indians were allowed into the capitol during Don Porfirio’s great celebration.

  Foreign dignitaries from all over the world were in town celebrating Don Porfirio’s eightieth birthday, and so El Presidente had given word that absolutely no one was to interrupt his celebration.

  With all the dignity he could muster, Don Pío refused to take the insult and informed the officer in charge that he was Colonel Pío Castro, also ex-marshal of Los Altos de Jalisco, and that he was a close friend of Don Porfirio and had an urgent message for him.

  The handsome young officer, Lieutenant Manuel Maytorena, only smiled and said, “That’s fine, my colonel, and now you, too, can camp here alongside the river with your men along with the thousands of other colonels who’ve come to see his majesty.”

  Two of Don Pío’s old soldiers went for their guns. No one had ever spoken abusively to Don Pío and lived. But Don Pío told his old amigos to hold their weapons and simply repeated his message to the well-dressed officer.

  Then Don Pío and his men went down to the river to camp. And it was true; camped alongside the river were thousands of ex-soldiers and among them were, indeed, dozens of great, old colonels who’d fought alongside Don Porfirio and Benito Juárez shoulder-to-shoulder.

  Don Pío and his men waited for ten days, camped outside of the capitol for which he’d fought for two decades. Finally, two of Don Pío’s grandsons and four of their young friends couldn’t stand the abuse that the great Don Pío had received. They rode into the city in the cover of night, unarmed, carrying a white flag, only to be shot down.

  The well-fed, well-armed soldiers hit Don Pío’s camp at dawn, killing five of his old compadres-in-arms and ten of their sons and grandsons. Don Pío cried that day as he’d never cried before.

  The French, whom he’d beaten in battle time and again with sometimes nothing but his bare hands and rocks, had won, after all. Don Porfirio, his old friend, had become white, rich and French.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  He was the baby of the family, the nineteenth child, having come to his mother on her fiftieth birthday—a gift from God, he was told.

  His name was Juan Salvador Villaseñor Castro, Don Pío’s thirty-seventh grandson. He was eleven years old and full of the devil as he came running down the dirt road as quickly as his short legs could carry him. He was barefoot, lifting dust as he came, and his little pot-belly swung side to side. There was a rich corn field to the left of him and a huge, walled-in hacienda in the distance. Coming to a small rise, Juan Salvador gripped his little straw hat so it wouldn’t blow off and upped his pace, screaming frantically as he came down the other side of the hill.

  “Soldiers!” he yelled. “Villistas!”

  Up ahead he could see his old, grey-haired mother, his two older sisters and his little niece and baby nephew get to their tired feet in a hurry so that they could get off the road, not wanting to be trampled by the approaching soldiers.

  Seeing the fear that he’d caused, Juan Salvador laughed, loving it, and screamed all the more. He could see the rest of the people, who’d been resting in the shade of the big, mesquite tree, get to their tired feet to escape the approaching soldiers, too. And further down the road, a good quarter of a mile beyond where his mother and sisters were, Juan also saw the foreman from the big hacienda turn his white horse and look at him.

  Jerking his hat off his head, Juan waved it, screaming as loud as he could, “Villistas! Villistas!”

  Hearing the sharp cries, the foreman whirled his bony, old horse around. He shouted a warning to the workers he was overseeing and took off for the safety of the hacienda as fast as he could go. His workers, mostly women, children and old men, were on foot and they didn’t follow him. Instead, they ran through the corn field and jumped into a ditch.

  Seeing the ruckus he’d caused, Juan tried hard not to laugh as he now watched the foreman, Cara de Nopal, screaming, “Soldiers! Soldiers!” as he ran through the gates of the big hacienda with his poor animal’s tail whirling about from being over-spurred.

  Stopping, Juan caught his breath, then put his straw hat back on and continued down the white, hot, soft dirt road at a leisurely trot toward his family who was hiding behind their little cart and a tired old burro so that they wouldn’t be trampled by the approaching soldiers.

  Juan and his family had been on the road for weeks. They were on their way north, hoping
to cross the Rio Grande at El Paso, Texas, into the safety of the United States. Their settlement up in Los Altos de Jalisco, that Don Pío had built to last for ten generations, had been destroyed.

  “Oh, Mama,” said Juan, coming up to his tired, old mother, Doña Margarita, “come out of hiding. I lied! No soldiers are coming!”

  “Oh, I’m going to kill you!” yelled Luisa, who at eighteen years old was Juan’s oldest living sister.

  “No, not now!” laughed Juan. “Quick, we’ve got to get the cart back on the road and pick all the corn we can and get out of here before Cara de Nopal comes back out with his rifle!”

  The pock-face foreman’s reputation for shooting defenseless women and children was known up and down the valley. But also it was known that he was a coward when it came to armed men.

  “Oh, mi hijito,” said Doña Margarita, “may God forgive you, because I’m not going to. You scared me to death!”

  “Don’t worry, Mama,” said Juan, grinning, “don’t you see? God has already forgiven me; it worked, and we’re alive!”

  His mother laughed. Her youngest child was only eleven years old, but he’d been fighting and twisting between the lines of the war for so many years that he was very experienced at the art of holding onto life and not dropping down death’s dark canyon.

  He took his mother’s hand, helping her out of the ditch that ran alongside the road. The ditch was full of brush and thorny cactus, and there was a stone wall behind it.

  Luisa already had hold of the burro’s reins, pulling at the little animal to get the cart back on the road. Juan’s other sister, Emilia, was sixteen and she was pushing at the back of the cart. Emilia was tall and slender and big with child. She had been raped by soldiers several months before and the humiliation had caused her to go blind.

  “Come on, Emilia, and you, too, Inocenta, push, while I pull!” yelled Luisa.

  Luisa was Juan’s oldest sister. She was wide and strong and red-headed like their father, Juan Villaseñor.

  Inocenta, small and dark with big beautiful eyes, was five years old. She got behind the cart and pushed along with Emilia. She was the daughter of their sister, Lucha, who’d abandoned them a few weeks before when they’d been attacked by soldiers.

  Getting his tired old mother on the road, Juan went back down into the ditch to help his sisters and niece push the cart up on the road. Luisa’s three-month-old baby, Joselito, was in the cart, sleeping peacefully.

  “All right, Mama,” said Juan, “you and Emilia start the burro up the road while Luisa and Inocenta help me pick the corn! We don’t have much time, unless we want to get our asses shot!”

  And he laughed, running across the road with Luisa and Inocenta into the corn field. They began picking the corn as fast as they could, not bothering to even knock off the big red stinging ants that crawled on their hands and arms.

  The other people saw what was going on, and some of them ran across the road to pick some corn, too. But most of them didn’t dare. Two days before, Cara de Nopal had shot a boy for stealing corn. His body still hung in the tree outside of the gates of the hacienda.

  Anxiously, Doña Margarita kept glancing toward the big stone walls of the hacienda as she held the reins of the little burro. Oh, she just didn’t want to lose any more children; she only had these three left of all nineteen that she’d brought into the world.

  Seeing that Juan was coming with another armful of corn, Doña Margarita turned to her blind daughter. “Get in the wagon, Emilia,” she said. “We’re going to have to run as soon as they finish.”

  “Oh, no, Mama,” said Emilia. She also had reddish-auburn hair like their father, but she wasn’t wide and strong like Luisa. She was delicately beautiful. “I may not see, but I can still run, Mama. You get in the wagon and hold the baby while I run behind, holding onto the wagon.”

  “Emilia,” said Doña Margarita, glancing toward the gates once more, “it’s rocky up ahead and you might trip. Remember, you’re not just half blind, you’re big with child, too!”

  Just then, Juan came running with a third armful of corn, tossing it into the wagon.

  “Get in, both of you!” he yelled. “Quick! Before Cara de Nopal comes out! And cover up the corn with your shawls and dresses!”

  “But, mi hijito,” said Doña Margarita, “the burro’s too old to pull us both.”

  “Not half as old as you, Mama,” said Juan, shoving his mother into the back of the wagon.

  “Oh, you are spoiled!” said his mother, settling herself in the wagon and covering the corn with her dress and shawl. “May the dog of the moon bite your silver tongue tonight!”

  “Only if he can catch me, Mama,” said Juan, kicking the burro in the ass.

  “Let’s go, burrito! ¡Vámonos!”

  And there came Luisa with her arms full of corn. Inocenta was right behind her.

  “You, too, Emilia, get in!” said Luisa. “And cover up the corn with your dress like Juan said.”

  Emilia quickly obeyed her husky, strong-willed sister and got in the cart with no more argument.

  Pulling and jerking, Juan could hear the hollow, gurgling noise of their little burro’s belly as they hurried down the road. The little burro’s face was all white from age, but still he farted and pulled, doing the best he could. Juan hated to push the tired old animal, but they had to get past the hacienda before Cara de Nopal came out again. Juan loved this little burro. This was the animal that he’d learned how to ride on up and down the barrancas of his grandfather’s settlement.

  Juan was wide like his sister, Luisa, but he wasn’t light-skinned like her. He was dark like his mother’s side of the family, and his eyes were surrounded with beautiful, long, thick eyelashes.

  Then they were just coming up by the tall, solid planked gates of the hacienda when Juan glanced up and saw the body of the boy who’d been shot, hanging upside down in the tree with his swollen, dry tongue sticking out. Flies were buzzing all about his head. Juan gasped, realizing he never should have looked. At that moment, the huge gates opened, and there was Cara de Nopal, mounted on his bony, old white horse with a rifle in his hand.

  “Why are you running?” he shouted, pointing his rifle at them. He was in his late twenties, and from up close he looked even uglier than his reputation.

  “The soldiers!” said Juan.

  The foreman glanced down the road. “I see no soldiers,” he said, pointing his rifle at Juan. “Let me see what you and your family have in your wagon, muchacho.”

  Juan swallowed. He didn’t know what to say. He was only a good liar when he could plan out his lie ahead of time. But then his sister, Luisa, hot-tempered and quick-witted, screamed. “Oh, my God! Here they come! Villistas! And they told us that they’re going to kill you because you helped the Carrancistas yesterday!”

  “But I didn’t!” cried Cara de Nopal, jerking his horse back inside between the tall gates. “They forced me! You tell them that for me!” He whirled his horse around. The two old men closed the solid, wood gates behind him.

  Luisa and Juan glanced at each other, laughing, then started down the road with the cart as quickly as they could go. They had to put as much distance as they could between themselves and this big hacienda before nightfall.

  The sun was going down behind the mountains in the distance when Juan and his family stopped to make camp alongside a small river outside of San Francisco del Rincón with two dozen other people fleeing from their homes. They could hear the cannons and see the flashes of the shooting ahead in the flat distance of the wide valley. The word was that Francisco Villa was in a battle with General Obregón just outside of León, the capitol of the state of Guanajuato.

  Juan unharnessed the burro and watered him, then massaged his back and shoulders and hobbled him for the night so that the little tired animal could graze freely. While his mother and sisters began building a shelter for the night, Juan and his niece, Inocenta, went into the flat little breaks to gather dry cow pies for the evenin
g fire. Dried-out cow manure made a much better fire than wood. It burned longer, hotter and caused less smoke.

  Gathering an armful of big, round, grey-brown cow droppings, Juan headed back to the camp in the soft, rosy-colored light of the ending day. They had chosen a good place to make camp. There was lots of brush and rock for them to build a shelter to protect them from the wind and cold.

  Back in camp, Juan quickly started a fire with leaves and twigs and then Inocenta helped him build a little teepee of up-ended cow pies over the top of the small fire. Once the fire was going good, the family gathered around and roasted the ears of corn that they’d soaked in chile water with plenty of salt. It was wonderful, sitting around the smokeless fire and smelling the corn cook.

  Up the line, someone began to strum a guitar and sing as the last of the daylight disappeared back up on the mountains to the east, the very same country in which Don Pío had camped on a knoll some fifty years ago, searching for an answer for living in peace.

  Smiling, Juan took his corn cob off the fire and began to eat it while it was still so hot that it burned his fingertips and hurt his lips. It was delicious, spicy-hot and salty. He ate with relish, licking his fingers.

  “Oh, I wish we hadn’t come so far,” he said, “so I could sneak back in the morning and steal more corn!”

  “You ever yell ‘soldiers’ like that again, without telling us first, and I’ll kill you!” said Luisa.

  “Only if you can catch me,” said Juan.

  They all laughed and continued eating, truly enjoying themselves. It had been another good day; they’d gotten food to fill their bellies and they were still alive.

  Finishing his third ear of corn, Juan began to feel sleepy, so he laid back on his mother’s lap, watching the last of their fire. His mother stroked him softly, gently.