The sun was going down beyond the short, little rolling hills in the flat distance. María and their mother helped Lupe take off her dress so they could wash it in the river before going on.
That night after eating, they all prayed alongside the river’s edge. They could hear soft guitar music coming from the ranch house across the water. Lupe felt so tired and worn out that she could barely keep awake.
Putting her little straw mat on the soft earth by the riverbank, Lupe lay down by her mother’s side, feeling so warm and good being with her mother. She looked out on the water and she saw that the moonlight and the stars were dancing on the flat surface of the river. She listened to the small waves slapping the banks of the great father river, and she absolutely knew for sure that she was now a woman, capable of having children.
Tears came to her eyes and she cuddled up close to her mother’s warm plump body, listening to the river rushing past them, filled with stars and moonlight. She dreamed, thinking of her mother’s crying tree and the great cathedral rocks and how the human heart never broke. No, it just regrew with life like the mighty oak and the wildflowers that came back each Spring. Lupe slept, dreaming, knowing that the true-love of her youth was gone, as was their beloved canyon, and a whole new life was about to begin—she continued dreaming, dreaming, dreaming of life, the dream.
BOOK FOUR
Even God Needs Help
“Okay,” said Epitacio as he and Juan came walking down the busy street of Douglas, Arizona, “I feel lucky! Let’s have a drink and double our paychecks!”
Juan and Epitacio had been working at the Copper Queen Mining Company for over a month and they’d just been paid.
“All right, whatever you say,” said Juan, feeling good about his brother-in-law who’d returned across the border to get them.
But Epitacio got drunk and lost both of their paychecks, then he refused to go home with Juan. The next day Epitacio didn’t show up for work. Rumor had it that he’d taken off, gone back to Mexico.
Juan wasn’t able to support his family by working only one shift at the Copper Queen, so he decided to change his name to Juan Cruz and get a second job on the night shift. After all, he was going on thirteen. He figured that he could hold down both shifts.
But, getting into line that night, one guy recognized Juan. His name was Tomás. He was seventeen years old and he had been in the pool hall the night Epitacio lost both of their paychecks.
Quickly, Juan winked at Tomás, signaling for him to keep still and not let on that he knew him. And it went easier than Juan had expected. Hell, the big, thick-necked gringo boss couldn’t tell him apart from all the other Mexicans.
“Hey, Juan,” said Tomás, once they were inside the smelter. Molten ore moved all about them in great kettles. “You want to make some extra money?”
“Sure,” shouted Juan above the noise of the smelter. “Why the hell you think I’m working a second shift? Because I love the smell of wet armpits?”
“Well, then, meet me at midnight on our taco break,” winked the handsome young man. “And I’ll show you a fine trick.”
“Sure thing!” yelled Juan. So they met at midnight and ate together and Tomás explained to Juan the plan. First, they’d put a sack of copper ore alongside the outside fence so they could steal it later; then the next day, they’d sell it in town to an American engineer.
“How much we gonna make?” asked Juan.
Tomás had to smile. He liked his young friend’s greed. “Oh, maybe six dollars each,” he said.
“Six dollars!” shouted Juan. He only made a dollar for an eight hour shift as it was. “That’s a fortune!” But then he thought again and he became suspicious. “Wait,” he said, “just how do you know about this gringo engineer, anyway?” Juan was only twelve, but he had forty-years’ worth of experience.
“Buddy,” said the tall, good-looking young man, rolling his eyes to the heavens with great style, “I got my means.” And he laughed a good, full, manly laugh, and Juan believed him.
They did it, and it worked beautifully. The next day they sold the ore to the American engineer in town for six dollars each. But, the following night, as they came up alongside the fence to do the same thing again, the lights came on and they were surrounded by sixteen armed men. The American engineer that they’d sold the ore to had set them up. He also worked for the Copper Queen. They were immediately taken to town, tried, found guilty and taken to Tombstone, Arizona.
“But I’m only twelve years old!” screamed Juan. “And my family will starve without me!”
“Ssssshhh!” said Tomás. “You tell them that and they’ll send you to a boys’ place, and I won’t be able to protect you! I got a plan. You just keep quiet and stick by me!”
So Juan stuck by his friend, saying he was eighteen, and that night in Tombstone, he saw what his friend’s plan was. When the other prisoners saw them, and they came on them like wolves to rape the sheep, Tomás turned his ass up at them so they wouldn’t beat him.
“Not me! You son-of-a-bitches!” bellowed Juan with all his might. “I’m from Los Altos de Jalisco! I’ll castrate the first puto cabrón who touches me!”
That night, shooting broke out in front of the jailhouse, and a terrible explosion blew out the back wall. A Mexican on horseback yelled “Kimonos, Aguilar!” Prisoners ran every which way as a dozen horsemen continued shooting. They had their brother on a horse, and they took off. Everyone else was left standing there, naked as plucked turkeys under the cold, night sky.
Instantly Juan took off on foot after the horsemen through the arroyo behind the jail. He ran uphill all night. Daybreak found him at the foot of a great mountain. In the distance, there came a dozen armed horsemen, cracking leather. He took off as fast as he could through the cactus. It was his birthday, August eighteenth, 1916. He was thirteen years old, but the only presents the gringos brought him were well-placed bullets singing by his ears. Finally, they caught him, beat him, tied him to a horse and dragged him back to town.
By the time his mother, two sisters, his nephew and two nieces finally found out what had happened to him, Juan was in the Arizona State Penitentiary at Florence, Arizona.
His mother cried and cried. Luisa screamed and cursed and banged her head. Emilia couldn’t stop coughing, and his nephew and nieces wept hysterically.
Then, the rich Mexican from Sonora, who’d driven Juan’s family to the penitentiary to visit him, asked to speak to Juan alone.
“Juan,” said the tall and thin old man once they were alone, “your mother is a wonderful lady. She’s nursed me back to health with herbs and massage. I love her dearly, and I regard you as my own son.”
Juan almost laughed at the stooped-over old man. Why, the son-of-a-bitch was an even smoother talker than the big bastard who’d converted Tomás into a woman.
“You see, Juan, I have a very high-spirited son like you. I love him and I’d do anything for him. But you see, mi hijito killed a Texas Ranger.” The dignified old man began to cry, leaning on his gold-headed cane. “I’ve been told that it was an honest battle, but the americanos don’t see it that way and they’re going to execute him.”
Juan’s heart came to his eyes. “I sympathize with you, Señor,” he said.
“I’m glad to hear that,” said the old man, “because, well, I have a proposition to make you. I’ll give your mother, God bless her soul, two hundred dollars in American money if you confess to the crime my son committed.”
Juan couldn’t believe his ears. He felt like spitting in the old man’s face. Hell, he only had six years to serve for stealing the six-dollars’ worth of ore, but for murder, shit, man, son-of-a-gringo-bitch, he’d be executed or be in for life.
“Calm down,” said the old man, “please, and listen to my whole proposition. After all, they already have you locked up, so how much more can happen to you?”
Juan calmed down and looked into the eyes of the old man who, it was said, owned more cattle in the State of Sonora
than the rails had ties.
“Your mother, look at her,” he continued, “see how desperate she is. This is a terrible time for us mejicanos.” He went on and on, and Juan didn’t curse him and send him packing, as the gringos said, but, instead, he listened and looked at his mother and sisters and nephew and nieces over there by the far wall. Finally, Juan pulled down into his gut with all the power of his balls, his tanates, and spoke.
“Make it five hundred in gold!”
And so the deal was made, and a new trial was set for the murderer of the famous, Mexican killing Texas Ranger of Douglas, Arizona. Juan Salvador Villaseñor, known as Juan Cruz, was found guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The big, fat Mexican cook from Guadalajara was the best man with a knife in the penitentiary at Florence, Arizona. He took Juan under his wing because they were both from Jalisco.
Two years before, the Mexican cook had won a lot of money in a poker game in Bisbee, Arizona. He’d been walking home when the three gringos that he had won the money from jumped him outside of town.
He was fat, so they’d made the very bad mistake of thinking that he was slow. Two died instantly, and the big Mexican had the third one down on the ground, ready to cut his throat, but the gringo kept crying for his life so much that the big Mexican finally decided to let him live on the promise that he’d admit to the authorities the following day that it had been a fair fight. But the next day, the third gringo went back on his word, saying that a dozen armed Mexicans had cut him and killed his two unarmed friends.
“So you see, Juan,” said the fat cook, “I got life because I was soft in the head. If I’d killed him, no one would’ve fingered me.”
The fat cook found out that Juan didn’t know how to read, and he explained to Juan the power of the written word. “Look,” he said, “the Mexican Revolution didn’t start with Villa or Zapata, as so many people think. No, it started with the power of the words written by my friend, Ricardo Flores Magón. I learned from Flores Magón that if a man can’t read and write, he’s nothing but a little puto weakling!”
And so, there in the penitentiary, Juan’s education began. He didn’t want to be a puto weakling, so he worked hard at learning to read. His earthly body was locked up, but his mind was set free as a young eagle soaring through the heavens. The fat cook became his teacher, and Juan loved it. Juan ate better than he’d eaten in years, and life was wonderful except for the days when his mother came to visit him, then Juan wanted out. He couldn’t stand to see his mother’s tears.
A year later, a new road camp was started outside of Safford, Arizona, near Turkey Flat, and prisoners got to volunteer. The big, fat cook warned Juan not to go because there’d be no guards with them at night and other prisoners would be sure to gang up on him and rape him like a female dog.
“Don’t worry,” said Juan, “I can take care of myself.”
“But your reputation of having killed that Ranger won’t protect you there,” said the big cook. “Believe me, it’s been my wing that’s kept you from the fate that got your friend Tomás.”
Tomás was now being bought and sold like a woman all over the prison to anyone who had the makings for half a dozen cigarettes. They’d knocked his teeth out and painted his ass for better service, it was said.
Juan looked at the big cook for a long time without speaking. “I’m going,” he said. “It’s my only chance to escape and stop my mother’s tears.”
“All right,” said the big cook, “then good luck to you. And always remember, un hombre aprevenido is a man alive. A guarded man is a man who’s wary, cautious, and lives life as if he’s lived it many times before.”
“I’ll remember,” said Juan, “aprevenido.”
“Yes,” said the big cook, and they shook hands, taking each other in a big abrazo like men do, and said farewell.
Five days later, Juan Salvador was in a Ford truck along with four other men chained by their feet to the bars of the iron cage. Two of the other prisoners were black-skinned, full-blooded Yaqui Indians with eyes as sharp as knives. Immediately, Juan liked them and he found out that they’d been put in prison for ten years for eating an army mule.
Getting to Turkey Flat, it turned out just as the big, fat cook had said it would. During the day they had armed guards on horseback all around them as they worked on the road over the mountain; but during the night, when they were locked up behind the barbed wire fence, there were no guards with them.
The things Juan learned in the first three nights were so awful, so completely inhuman, they would haunt him for the rest of his life. Here, men were worse than mad dogs. When he wouldn’t let them rape him, they beat him with clubs; then they courted him with flowers as if he were a woman. When that didn’t work, either, the big German pit boss and the black snake came at Juan in the night. But Juan was aprevenido, and he got the pit boss in the eyes with boiling coffee, but not before his big, black friend cut Juan’s stomach open with a knife.
The last thing Juan remembered was the smell of his own intestines coming out of his stomach, between his fingers, as he desperately tried pushing the whole slippery mess back inside himself.
When Juan came to, he was in the tent hospital, and the big German and his friend were tied down to the beds next to him. They were screaming, foaming at the mouth, and straining against their ropes with all their might. The guards had castrated them, and blood covered their thighs. Juan pretended he was still unconscious and laid there quietly.
Later that same day, they brought in the two Yaqui Indians who’d been poisoned with canned food. For two weeks, Juan drifted in and out of death. The German raved and screamed. The big black died. The Indians never made a sound. One day, just at dusk, Juan heard the two Indians whispering, and they slipped away. Quickly, Juan got up and crawled after them.
“Turn to stone,” one Indian said to him as they got out the door. He did as they told him, squatting down, and they were stones.
The guards walked right by, searching for them, but they didn’t see them. The armed men saddled horses and took off after them, but they never moved. They just sat there, squatted to the earth like stone, moving a little and then a little more as they went down the mountainside and, finally, took to the creek.
For seven days and nights they walked and hid and ran. Juan never knew how they did it, but they’d turn into stone anytime anyone came near them.
Near Douglas, Arizona, Juan left the two Yaquis and went to church, waiting all day until his mother showed up for her daily prayers. They hugged and kissed, then she told him the news that his blind sister Emilia had died. They wept and prayed for Emilia to regain her sight in heaven. His mother got him a change of clothes and Juan took the name of his grandfather, Pío Castro. He immediately signed up with fifty other Mexicans to go north to work at the Copper Queen in Montana.
In Montana, Juan and his Mexican companions were put in with thousands of Greeks and Turks. The Greeks had never seen any Mexicans before and so, when they heard the other Mexicans call Juan “Chino” because of his curly hair, they thought he was Chinese, so they named him Sam Lee.
Sam Lee became Juan’s official name. He lived among the Greeks and Turks for two years, working for the Copper Queen Mining Company in the winter, the railroad during the spring, and in the sugar beet fields during the harvest.
One day, a huge, brutally handsome Turk came to their camp. That night he stopped a fight between two armed men just by staring them down.
Immediately, Juan took a liking to this formidable-looking man of granite. He watched him set up a poker game that weekend and take everyone’s money fair and square. The big man noticed Juan watching him and hired him to clean up the tables for him. They became fast friends. The big man’s name was Duel. He told Juan that his mother had been Greek and his father a Turk.
“Here, inside the heart,” he told Juan when they went out for dinner, “are the greatest battles a real man can fight. Blood to blood, a war is going on in
side me that’s ten thousand years old! The Greeks and Turks are mortal enemies! And I’m half and half, just like you with your Indian and European blood!”
Hungrily, he talked to Juan all night long, telling him of Greece and Turkey and the history of that part of the world. It was the first time in all his life that Juan had ever come close to a man who not only wasn’t a Catholic, but readily admitted that he didn’t believe in God.
Hearing this, Juan opened up his heart, too, and he sadly told the Greek-Turk how he, too, had left God at the Rio Grande.
“I knew it,” said Duel, “the first moment I laid eyes on you. I said to myself, ‘That boy, he’s been to hell and back.’ For no real man like us can believe in the puppet-God of the churches. The devil, yes, of course, but not God!”
So that winter, Duel set up a gambling room in the basement of the best whorehouse in Butte which was owned by a famous English woman named Katherine. Duel made Juan his protégé, teaching him the art of taking money from the greedy workmen who drank too much.
For the first time in his life, Juan saw cards as a solid business. He now realized that he and Epitacio had never had a chance in the world to double their paychecks back in Douglas. Why, he and Duel took money hand-over-fist every night, giving free liquor to the big losers and maybe even a girl. The famous lady Katherine took her share, too. Over and over again, Duel explained to Juan that all of life was a gamble and so, “At gambling,” he said, “a real man must be king!”
There were problems, especially with the local cowboys who didn’t like foreigners taking their money. One night there was a bad knife fight. A big, powerful, raw-boned cowboy was going to cut up a girl that he blamed for losing all his money when, to everyone’s surprise, Juan just stepped in, disarming the big cowboy with a number twenty-two cue stick and knocked him unconscious.
Rain of Gold Page 30
