Safe Passage

by Carla Kelly

  Still waiting his turn to cross the border, he felt in his pocket for the key. Home was far away now, a too-small clapboard house that swayed in strong winds, crowded with Hancocks. Before he left Colonia García, he almost went into his own house but changed his mind. There was nothing in there he wanted to keep except a memory or two of Addie before things went so wrong, so fast. Maybe the rebels would make better use of the place.

  One of the pleasures of his boyhood had been taking the train to the United States with Pa. Sometimes they bought cattle, or now and then there was a little Church business. As the years had passed and he became bilingual, the United States seemed more foreign to him. It had never been his home, so he had nothing to look forward to.

  Once through the border crossing, Ammon looked around at his fellow travelers. Bishop Bentley was talking to a lieutenant who had ridden up, but everyone else looked glum and silent. Ammon sighed and faced south, wondering if the rebels had already rounded up and slaughtered the Hancock cattle, some of them his, some of them Pa’s.

  He had left them in a well-watered box canyon south of their land. The herd had been diminishing daily, the livestock roped and dragged away to slaughter. In the middle of night, he and Pa had trailed what remained of the herd ten miles south to that canyon, but it was probably just a matter of time before the guerillas or the federales found them.

  The whole business was unfair, but that was revolution. The revolt against the increasingly oppressive regime of Porfirio Díaz had practically exploded in their laps. Chihuahua had been the first state to rise up and follow Francisco Madero in his bid to take over a tottering, corrupt government. Madero’s control was not firm, and others rose against him as the revolutionaries did what factions tend to do and began devouring each other.

  Advised from Church headquarters to maintain strict neutrality, the Mormons in the Mexican Colonies found themselves victimized by all sides. Cattle vanished to feed roving armies, and horses were fair game. There were days when everyone wondered just who the harvests of grain and fruit were feeding—their own families, the guerillas, or government troops.

  The women and children were ordered out first,packing what little they could and leaving the rest behind because there was neither room nor time. Pa had insisted on staying behind with the other García men in their mountain colony, but the bishop had insisted just as vigorously that he couldn’t stay in the saddle long with his bad leg. Pa had protested all the way to the depot in Pearson, but he left on the train with his family, and then Ammon was all alone.

  Ammon became expert at dodging roving bands of insurgents, traveling by night to Pearson to shut down his own freighting business and pack up ledgers and records. That was hard in a private way. Addie had kept his books, back when things were good between them. As he packed his ledgers, several notes fluttered out bearing the general theme of “I love you.” He crumpled one and threw it away but saved the rest. He rode back to García in the dark, thoughtful.

  He had maintained his philosophical frame of mind through the next week, when guerillas rode through García, taking potshots at chickens and looking around for horseflesh more lively than the worn-down animals they flogged. He held his breath when a few of the bolder rebels rode by the little house he had shared with Addie. To his relief, they didn’t do more than glance at the half-burned house, unaware of the García horses tethered inside.

  No more insurgents appeared after the latest bunch picked through a town already bare. One calm day followed another, which led to real anger when word came from Stake President Junius Romney for all the men in the colonies, from Díaz almost on the border to distant Chuichupa, to get out too. They obeyed their leaders.

  So Ammon had saddled up Blanco and rode down the quiet main street with the other men. The quiet was so strange, so alien to the usual bustle of García. No smoke came from the chimneys. Family dogs moped about the gates and barnyards, sniffing for boys long gone. Ammon heard the Fowlers’ canary trilling as they left García. The bird had been let out of its cage on the porch, and it sang from a tree.

  He smiled at that, thinking of any number of sermons that could use that canary to symbolize the Colonies’ Saints, singing a new song in another country, or maybe just Saints making the best out of what life dealt and singing anyway. Addie could have thought of other topics; she was good at that, he remembered.

  Ammon had glanced down the tree-shaded side street to Grandma Sada’s home before he turned toward the mountain road that would take longer than the usual road to Juárez but was safer. For the past two years, he had always looked down that street as he rode from García. Addie used to spend time at Grandma Sada’s. She would watch for him and blow him a kiss as he let Blanco put on a little horse show for her benefit. It had been a long time since Addie Hancock had blown him a kiss.

  B

  Ammon thought about Addie that night at Alamo Seco, where the men had secured their horse herd, safe now from Mexican armies and under the watchful eye of the 9th Cavalry. The rain, long awaited in that dry land, had started before there was even time to cook dinner. Bishop Thurber blessed the cold bacon and hardtack, and they ate without much noticeable gratitude.

  Hunched in a quilt someone had loaned him, Ammon gazed into the bare sticks of the washed-out campfire, wishing he hadn’t left behind his little picture of his wife, taken in St. George on their wedding day four years ago. She wasn’t the prettiest sister in the Finch family; that title went to Evangeline Finch, married now to a flabby banker in Logan, Utah. What had attracted him to Addie, back when he first saw her in Colonia Juárez at age fourteen, was her serenity and silence.

  Although he loved his sisters and cousins, Ammon sometimes had found himself wanting peace and quiet, something in short supply in the Hancock house. It wasn’t a longing he could put his finger on until he sat next to Adaline Finch during a youth meeting. A shy smile came first, followed by a brief introduction. After that, she had sat beside him in silence, a half-smile on her pleasant face, just there, which turned out to be enough, because he thought of her often after that. When she did speak, she made practical sense. Through the years, he admired her solicitude toward her Grandma Sada, who lived in García.

  As the years passed, he even flattered himself that Addie—they had graduated from Adaline and Ammon to Addie and Am—seemed to spend most of the summer in García, staying with Grandma Sada. And Grandma never minded his presence on the porch swing when he was in town and not freighting lumber down to Pearson.

  He couldn’t have put a time or a date on the moment when he fell in love with Addie Finch. He knew Addie’s parents weren’t too pleased, but he also had noted that Thomas and Yvonne Finch focused more of their attention on their more beautiful daughter. After he passed his twenty-second birthday and his freighting business settled into respectable permanence, he took his courage in hand and drove the seven miles from Pearson to Juárez on a day when he knew Addie was in García.

  His audience with Thomas Finch was brief. It worked in his favor that the Finches were just then in far headier negotiations with that banker in Logan, who had noticed Evangeline Finch at a cousin’s house in Salt Lake City and decided only she would do. Ammon knew, even as he spoke, that his little business was just a cricket chirping on a hearth compared to the banker from Logan.

  It was enough. Thomas grunted his consent, extracted a pledge from Ammon that he would take good care of his Adaline, and called it good.

  Courage in hand, he had driven that night back to García and knocked on Grandma Sada’s door after ten o’clock. A smile on her face, Sada had gestured for Addie to come to the parlor and left them alone. It was a moment’s work to declare the love she already knew about and get a prompt yes. He was too practical to get an engagement ring, but she never mentioned it.

  In November 1908, with other engaged couples and vigilant chaperones, they took the Honeymoon Trail from García, through Arizona to Washington County, Utah, where they were married in the St. Georg
e Temple for time and eternity. Loving Addie turned out to be even sweeter than he had imagined, and he had a good imagination.

  Then it all fell apart through misunderstanding, and the wife he adored threw his wedding ring at him. Before he had turned awkwardly on his crutches and left Grandma Sada’s dining room, he had watched her hands go to her empty belly in a futile gesture, because the child was gone. It broke his heart too.

  I wish you had read even one of my letters, Addie, he thought now, as he knelt in the rain with the others for prayer. He prayed as he always did—silently, after other weightier issues had been broached before the Lord Almighty—for her heart to soften. He loved her still, but as he settled into an American mudhole and American rain poured down, he knew it was time to move on.

  TWO

  THE RAIN CONTINUED the next day as the men from the Colonies rode their horses toward Hachita, New Mexico. The rain still pelted them as they corralled their horses on a member’s land and took the night train to El Paso, Texas, where their families waited.

  Ammon was fifty cents shy for his ticket, so Bishop Thurber loaned it to him. He found a seat by the window and sat down with a flop that made the dust whoosh out of the cushion and rise in little clouds. He took his boots off, wishing again that he had brought along those extra socks Ma had mentioned three weeks ago.

  The lady across the aisle looked at him with pointed disfavor, so he squished his feet back into his boots and just stared out the window until he fell asleep.

  They arrived in El Paso just after sun-up. No one had any reason to hope that the families would be there to meet the train, but there they were, lined up on the platform, watching silently as the train pulled in before rushing forward.

  Ammon craned his neck out the window, searching for his family. He couldn’t help looking for Addie, but she wasn’t there. He kept looking, and there were the Hancocks. Relieved, he waved and was startled to see his father dabbing at his eyes. Eight-year-old Catherine was jumping up and down. His father carried Junebug, who clapped her hands when Catherine pointed him out. Elise and Joannie cried.

  He waited his turn to get off, impatient, and then he was overwhelmed as he was engulfed by sisters and cousins.

  Joannie hugged him and then backed off, wrinkling her nose. “Ammon, you’re so dirty! What’s Mother going to say?”

  “It hardly matters,” said Pa drily as he hugged Ammon, Junebug sandwiched between them. “She’ll be too busy crying to notice how bad he stinks.”

  For all that she thought herself so grown up now, with longer skirts, Elise scrubbed at her eyes like a child, then hugged Ammon. “This is what happens when we leave him alone for a couple of weeks. He goes all to pieces. Ammon, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “I am too,” he told her, swallowing a boulder of homesickness for García and Mexico. He looked around, still hopeful for a glimpse of Addie. At some point, I hope this stops hurting so bad, he thought when she didn’t materialize.

  He smiled at his father, who had watched him look around.

  “We haven’t seen her,” Pa said. He clapped his hand on Ammon’s shoulder and gave him a little shake. He pointed to one of four US Army trucks, their engines idling. “Our chariot awaits.”

  Ammon helped his sisters into the truck, impressed with their familiarity around engines and motors. The vehicle was a novelty to him. He clambered aboard, then took Junebug from his father while another man helped him in.

  “Where’re we going?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard above the engine. He grabbed for his Stetson when the truck started with a lurch.

  “Just you wait, Ammon,” was all his father said.

  Only a few streets from the depot, the trucks stopped at Walter Long’s lumberyard. Ammon jumped out to help his sisters. With a frown, he looked around. So this was home. His frown deepened to see families living in little stalls and cubicles where lumber had been removed. Washing was strung everywhere, and quilts were tacked up to offer some privacy.

  “It’s not so bad now, son. You should have seen things last week before some of the families left for Utah and Idaho.” Pa chuckled. “We were all about as jam-packed in as those eccentric Hancocks back in García!”

  His joke fell flat. Ammon stared at the laundry, the cooking fires, the lumber stalls, the blue-bottle flies already droning in the dusty air, which was starting to heat up. These families own the nicest homes in Mexico and run the largest herds in Chihuahua, he thought, shocked.

  Ma stood in the entrance to one of the stalls, holding back a quilt with one hand and shading her eyes against the sunrise with the other. She spotted him and came across the yard toward him, walking at first and then running, her arms out.

  Ammon picked her up and whirled her around. She hugged him and started to cry.

  “Ma, I’m fine,” he said softly.

  “I’m just glad you’re here,” she replied, her voice just as soft. She nudged his arm with her head. “Even though you don’t look so happy to be here.”

  “I’m not.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out the front door key. “Here you are.”

  She took the key from him, turning it over and over in her hand as if she had never seen such a thing before. “Wasn’t I the silly one? I’ll probably never see that house again, and I worried so much about locking the front door.”

  Ammon laughed. “I did lock the front door, but we were almost down to Colonia Juárez before I remembered I left the back door unlocked.”

  His mother laughed too, and it was a genuine laugh. “For your information, I have no idea where that back door key is.” She tucked her arm through his and pulled him toward the shade of the Hancock lumber stall. “It hardly matters, does it? You’re here, and I’m content with that.”

  They ate breakfast together, all of them squashed tight. Ammon squatted Indian-style on the ground and his sisters perched on the lumber crowded into the back of the stall, which was arranged stair step fashion for seating. The food was army rations, the same as he had eaten yesterday when they crossed at Dog Springs, with the addition of canned salmon.

  “Ammon, your mother and Aunt Loisa are so resourceful. We’ve only been here a few weeks and they’ve already devised umpteen ways to make salmon taste like … well, salmon.”

  Everyone laughed, including Junebug. After the silence of the ranch back in García, the sound of laughter made tears well up in Ammon’s eyes. Ma must have noticed, so she passed around the salmon croquettes and fussed over her youngest daughter, who was scraping the mud off Ammon’s pants with a table knife.

  “I draw the line at salmon ice cream, however,” she announced. “Wouldn’t people wonder about us then?”

  Ammon smiled at her, well aware of her effort to distract his sisters from their big brother’s emotions, and he looked at his father. “You said something about people leaving. Where are they going?”

  His father rubbed his chin. “Those that managed to get some money and valuables out have left for Utah, most of ’um to stay with relatives.” He shrugged, and Ammon saw his embarrassment. “Our money’s wrapped up in land and cattle, so we have to make do here, at least for a little while.”

  “Which reminds me,” said Ma, her voice brisk now, as though she wanted to gloss over something else. “Father, you’d better hurry a bit or you’ll be late for work.”

  “Dad, you got a job already?” Ammon asked. “Doing what?”

  Pa’s eyes were tired; maybe he knew better than to try to fool his son. “For the princely sum of five dollars a week, I clerk and box groceries in Medina’s Mercado down the road. I get all the culled vegetables.” He was silent a moment, then tentative. “It’s a nice change from canned salmon, once you pick out the bad spots.”

  “Oh.” Ammon couldn’t think of anything to say. He looked away, finding the quilt pattern hanging at the stall’s entrance suddenly fascinating.

  Elise cleared her throat. “Ma thinks I can find a job waiting tables in a café.”

  “A
nd Bishop told me there’s an opening for a maid in one of the downtown hotels,” Joannie told him, also finding that quilt pattern fascinating.

  Ammon looked from one sister to the other. His eyes filled up again, and he looked down at Junebug, leaning against him like she used to do at home.

  “It’s all right, Ammon,” his mother said. “We’re managing.”

  His father went outside to wash, and Ammon and his sisters were quiet, not looking at each other. His mother broke the silence.

  “Ammon, I have a funny feeling that you didn’t think to bring out another pair of jeans with you. All we have is your Sunday suit, and it’s in the bottom of our one trunk now.”

  “I … I left my clothes in Pearson, because I’m planning to return soon,” he said, which made his mother swallow and look away this time. “Ma, it’s our country too.”

  “Is it?” she asked. “Then why are we here?”

  He couldn’t think of an answer, but he didn’t think she expected one. He watched her a moment, relieved when she became the practical woman who had raised them all, maybe even Pa.

  “Get him a quilt, Elise,” she said, sounding like the sergeant at Dog Springs. “The rest of you, close your eyes. Drop ’um.”

  He did as he was told. He handed his grimy clothes to his mother and took the quilt that Elise offered to him, her eyes closed, but a grin on her face. He sat down cross-legged on someone’s cot while Ma carried his clothes outside and dumped them in wash water.

  The cot was too short to stretch out on, so he curled himself into a ball. His eyes grew heavy as he watched his sisters straighten up the stall. The flies droned as his eyes closed. Addie had told him once that he could sleep anywhere, and she was right. Before he slept, he did what he always did, and asked Heavenly Father to bless his wife. He decided he could be philosophical. If Addie had stayed with him, she’d be in a lumber stall right now. Maybe after a few months of more gentrified living in Utah, she would finally file for divorce.