by Robert Hough
Again he paused, his eyes casting over the crowd.
— Of all my achievements … and I’ve had a few, I won’t deny that … of all my achievements, my proudest to date is helping to bring some measure of prosperity to the fine, fine people of Corazón de la Fuente.
The applause bordered on the apoplectic. It was only when it finally petered out, a process that took minutes and minutes, that a croaky voice rang out from the rear of the crowd.
— Stop!
Everyone turned to see that Azula Mampajo, the village curandera, was standing on an overturned potato crate waving a bony arm in the air, looking even more disturbed and witch-like than normal.
— Stop! she yelled again. — Can’t you people see? This man is a liar. This man is a peddler of myths and false hope. He’s just playing with you! You’re an amusement to him and nothing more. You’re a new suit of clothes, and one he’ll wear out quickly. I can’t believe you think he really cares about you. Believe me, I’ve seen the future, and by the time he gets through with you, there’ll be nothing left of your town but smouldering debris!
This outburst spawned a rabid response from the people of Corazón de la Fuente, many of whom wanted to step up and shoot the old witch and be done with her forever. It was the hacendero, Antonio Garcia, who arrived at a more level-headed solution: he marched towards her and grabbed her around the midsection.
Wrinkling his nose at her bovine odour, he said: — That’s just about enough out of you, old woman.
He then dragged her kicking and howling out of the glow cast by the generator-fed lights. Meanwhile, everyone laughed at this spectacle. She is worried about losing patients to the doctor! someone loudly opined, and this caused those assembled to laugh all the harder. Up onstage, the mayor grinned bashfully at Brinkley.
— I’m sorry, doctor.
— Ah, there is no reason to apologize! Everywhere I go and everywhere I speak, there are those who object to the march of progress. It is a cross men of science are born to bear. If you want to know the real truth, I enjoy such moments, for if people like that good woman are so threatened by my work, it means I am truly getting somewhere.
Everyone applauded, including the mayor, who also lifted his chin and laughed. In the midst of this merriment, the good doctor looked at his watch, a movement that caused a majority of the crowd to do the same, even though most of them were not wearing timepieces.
— I see, announced Brinkley, — that the time is upon us! He paused, mouth open, while continuing to look at his watch.
— All right, he said slowly. — All … right … just a few more seconds … Here we go: ten … nine …
The crowd joined in.
— eight … seven … six …
Violeta, who found herself swept away by the drama of the moment, began counting as well.
— five … four … three …
And even the very young and the very old, both of whom had lost the gist of what exactly was happening, counted while making chopping noises in the humid night air.
— two … one … Ladies and gentlemen, I give you XER, the Sunshine Station from Between the Nations!
The doctor then gestured excitedly at the mayor, who reached up, grabbed the enormous switch, and pulled. The crowd hushed. A second passed, just long enough for a look of worry to pass over Brinkley’s features. It disappeared when, seemingly from nowhere, the nasal tones of a popular gringo hymn came from a radio that had been set up on the stage.
Will the circle be unbroken
By and by, Lord, by and by?
There’s a better home awaiting
In the sky, Lord, in the sky …
A second after that, the people of Corazón de la Fuente looked up, their mouths open, their eyes widening with disbelief. A collective gasp passed from the lips of those assembled. A hundred metres above them, the tip of the tower glowed. A second later, the sky erupted with a shimmering frog-green corona, the result of high-powered radio frequencies ricocheting between clouds and the floor of a desert. For those who were watching this sudden dance of light, it was a moment that redefined their concept of beauty, amazement, and what existed within the realm of the possible.
After regarding the light for a few seconds, Violeta turned away, understanding full well that its brilliance was unlocking a part of her that for too long had remained buried under layers of studiousness and grief. She looked at the crowd of green-tinted faces around her and felt a joyousness that she did not in any way trust, and that made her feel more than a little uncomfortable. She then turned to Francisco and said Forgive me with such a confusing mixture of joy and gravity that it all but spoiled what happened next.
Violeta Cruz seized Francisco Ramirez by the shoulders, pulled him towards her, and kissed him full on the mouth.
{ DOS }
{ 12 }
AS THAT TORRID SUMMER WORE ON, CHANGE CAME with a rapidity that no one without the benefit of clairvoyance could have predicted. The streets of Corazón de la Fuente, once so quiet that you could sit for hours on a plaza bench and hear nothing but the hum of your own cogitations, were now occupied most hours of the day and night, and not always by the most temperate of characters. The reason was simple. Money had come to the residents of the ejido, most of whom had originated in unfathomably poor states like Oaxaca, Michoacán, and Chiapas, and who had grown up trading corn, cocoa beans, squash, potatoes, or handicrafts woven by single-toothed grandmothers. This was the problem. You didn’t save squash left over after a good growing season, as it simply grew mould. You didn’t save whatever potatoes weren’t consumed by your family: they turned mushy and gave off a sweet, alcoholic scent that attracted wasps. Likewise, you did not save money you earned simply because an impulsive gringo doctor decided he needed a radio tower. There could be yet another coup, and then all of the pesos spilling out of your pockets, mattresses, and furniture cushions would be as worthless as Coahuilan dust.
Now that they were rich, and no longer busy with the tower, the men of Corazón de la Fuente filed into Carlos Hernandez’s cantina like penitents before a cross. By the afternoon of any given day, dark, squat-shouldered drunks were reeling along the town’s two main avenues, singing melancholy songs about life in poor Sierra Madre villages. In the mornings, those who hadn’t made it back to the ejido would awake sprawled against curbs or lying face down on plaza benches, their mouths as dry as sand. It was rumoured that one lucky drunkard awoke sprawled over the lip of the Pozo de Confesiones. Had he shifted his weight during the night, he’d have likely snapped his neck in the resulting plummet.
Whereas the residents of Corazón de la Fuente had once awoken to the crowing of roosters, they now woke to the rough sound of drunkards, who would groan, rhetorically ask Where in the chingada am I? and then throw up on their huaraches. Whereas mothers once let their children play in the streets at all hours of the day and night, they were now careful to pull them in by the time the sun was lowering and the first wave of mescal drinkers was staggering out of Carlos’s saloon. Mostly, the townsfolk accepted this as one of the drawbacks of progress.
Two hundred kilometres west, the town of Piedras Negras suffered from the same undesirable elements. There they had given rise to an industry of people selling late-night quesadillas and tripe stew from street carts, a practice that was already in its nascence in Corazón de la Fuente. The cantina owner now employed a bartender named Ernesto to keep up with business, and Fajardo Jimenez needed counter help now that his shop stayed open until the wee hours. Prosperity, it seemed, really had come to town, the long-time residents of Corazón reasoning that it was only a matter of time before the ejido dwellers ran out of money. In the meantime, they would have to be fools not to help relieve them of it.
Local drunks, their veins coursing with cerveza and ancient native wisdom, weren’t the only ones taking to the streets of Corazón. Over the river in Del Rio, Dr. John Romulus Brinkley was offering reduced rates at the Roswell Hotel for any out-of-state resident who
came to have his Compound Operation. Afflicted gringos responded in droves, all of them having heard of the procedure — as well as the hope it presented — on Radio XER. This proved to be a boon for at least one scarab-ring-wearing businessperson in Corazón de La Fuente. Brinkley’s clients would rest up at the Roswell, waiting for the post-operative throbbing to be replaced by a different, more pleasant brand of pulsation. Eager to find out whether their money had been well spent, they would cross over to Corazón de la Fuente, their way lit by flashing green skies, their hands gripped tight around one of the bills that Madam Félix had posted all over Del Rio. Showing an understanding of both euphemism and the limits of the law, she described her business as a place where a massage, a hot bath, a decent cigar, and other prompters of relaxation could be procured.
The townsfolk of Corazón de la Fuente soon grew accustomed to the sight of a lineup leading from Madam Félix’s door and extending along Avenida Cinco de Mayo. A cottage industry of vendors arose, who sold these men everything from tacos to Chiclets to hair combs to tiny glasses filled with murky home-distilled mescal. Beggars from all over Coahuila, many of whom were blind and/or suffering from stunting genetic disorders, also made their way to Corazón, knowing full well that men about to partake of sin often redeem themselves with a little almsgiving. Others came from the southern half of the country, having incorrectly heard that there was still work to be had at the tower site. During the day these wretches shared the streets with drunken ejido-dwellers, converting the plazas and side streets into makeshift sleeping places.
A taxi industry sprouted, seemingly overnight. Anyone with a burro, cart, or bicycle with commodious handlebars would now wait at the bridge for the procession of men who crossed every night, looking simultaneously bashful and ravenous as unfed coyotes. Upon crossing the border, Madam’s clients were always willing to pay for some form of guide, having been told time and time again that México was a foul, lawless snakepit where the sun burned holes in your retinas, the ground crawled with scorpions, and every manner of degenerate was waiting to prey upon you. As a result, even those Mexicanos with nothing more to offer than a trustworthy disposition would, for a commensurately lower fee, offer to guide visitors on foot to the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures, which was beginning to gain a reputation as one of the finest bordellos in northern México. Upon reaching Madam’s, the gringos tended to tip their porters well, if only to express their relief at not having been murdered along the way.
Soon there were so many taxistas in Corazón that a tertiary industry arose. Those with a knowledge of English — or the ability to fake a knowledge of English — began selling lessons to the taxistas, so that they in turn could put their clients at ease with such disarming phrases as Is a bery bootiful ebening, señor, and You liking some hoochy-coochy, meester?
One such tutor was Francisco Ramirez, who put a sign to this effect on the wall of his family home, advertising that he was offering English lessons on Saturday mornings. Francisco’s English was passable at best, but he benefited from his reputation as a young man who had somehow vanquished an entire posse of bazooka-wielding psychopaths in the middle of a scorching-hot desert. Soon admiring students started knocking on the family’s mesquite-plank door, holding out a handful of pesos and asking if this was enough for a lesson. Mostly they were indigenous folk who’d come north during the revolution, having grown up without the benefit of a bilingual border culture. They were uniformly swarthy and doe-eyed and had a guileless habit of blinking when nervous or confused.
— Now repeat after me, Francisco would say. — I am very pleased to meet you.
— I am bery pliss to mit joo.
— Not quite, Francisco would explain in Spanish. — You’re saying b instead of v and you’re making your long vowels short. Try again.
— I am bery pliss to mit joo.
— Remember last week? When we studied the difference between the b and v sounds?
— Sí, Francisco. (blink)
— Then let’s give it another go.
— I am bery plissed to mit joo.
Though this was frustrating, Francisco benefited from a high level of motivation: he had a sweetheart now. And while it was true that Violeta did not ask him for things, as most of the other chicas in town would have, it was still nice to bring her flowers purchased from Indio vendors who spent their days combing the desert for cactus blooms, or to buy her the occasional soft drink from the store of Fajardo Jimenez. They would then go walking through town, Francisco conscious of the leering, resentful glances being cast in his direction. He didn’t care, for each afternoon the time would inevitably come when the day began to weaken over the western plains. At such moments it was as though the peaks of the distant sierras were lancing the sun, causing it to bleed molten colour across the skies.
In this passionate light, Francisco and Violeta would walk along a goat path forged during the revolution by women escaping the satanic demands of men with guns and no one to answer to. It meandered south past the old Spanish mission and continued well into the desert. After a kilometre or so, the path finally came over a rise and terminated in a long, sandy lee that, on a night when the clouds were full and the corona was operating at peak illumination, offered a brilliant kelp-green vista of the Coahuilan desert. It was a place of undeniable wonderment, the howls of roving coydogs providing an atmospheric soundtrack.
Since the end of the revolution, the spot had served a different, much more pleasing, purpose. It was here that the young of the town met for romantic assignations, away from protective fathers and mothers worried that their daughters were about to make the same mistakes they had made at that age. Often, upon reaching the lee, Francisco and Violeta could see as many as a dozen couples, stretched along at ten-metre intervals, all embracing in the tarragon-hued starlight.
Francisco would then escort Violeta to an unoccupied spot well away from the others, and there they would loll amid sandy brambles and press against one another, a heated connectivity occurring between lips and mouths and hands and skin and hips and the sort of words spoken when only the present tense is relevant and desire is made tangible and matter converts to a fluid, glowing energy and the whole of the universe becomes simple and glorious and intended for the benefit of young people only.
Love, in other words, was in the air. There was something about the existence of the tower, its mammoth tip throbbing red, that enriched the blood, tantalized the flesh, and caused the hammocks of Corazón de la Fuente to bounce with a ferocity that had not been known during the libido-draining years of the revolution. The aging molinero, in love with Laura Velasquez, felt a sprightliness invade his body: there were times when he had to remind himself that he was eighty-eight years of age and not an infatuated teenager. The hacendero, too, found himself newly enraptured with his paramour, Madam Félix, so much so that at times he contemplated telling the whole village of their love. It was also known that Consuela Reyes, mother of Alfonso and Luis, had caught the eye of a carpenter from Rosita, who had visited on the night that Radio XER went on the air and the skies began to shimmer with green light.
Even the cantina owner, Carlos Hernandez, long denied the physical expression of love, felt inspired by the town’s collective ardour. Late one night he walked into the desert, his way lit by the rippling corona. There he extracted the money he kept in his safety box, which had grown exponentially since the explosion of gringo traffic to the town. He stuffed his savings into his jeans, returned to his home, and slept that night with his earnings hidden in his pillowcase. Margarita, who respected the invisible line between them, was none the wiser.
The following afternoon he saddled a neighbour’s burro and headed towards the bridge, his pockets bulging with pesos and dollars. To anyone who asked, he claimed that he was heading to Del Río to investigate the possibility of buying a saloon mirror unmarred by pistol fire and the yellowing caused by time’s passage. He passed the guard on the Mexican side of the border, who was dozing against the f
irst post of the bridge railing, his hat pulled down over his brow. At the other side, a diminutive border guard in dark glasses emerged from his cabaña, only to begin a routine familiar to every Corazónite who needed to cross into America with dry clothing. The guard asked to see a passport. The cantina owner apologized and, in workable English, admitted that he did not have one. The guard said that was a problem. The cantina owner said he hoped it wasn’t too big a problem. The guard said maybe there was something he could do. The cantina owner said it would be most appreciated. The guard offered to sell him a transit visa, though it would cost ten dollars. Carlos countered that he was just a poor cantina owner. The exchange went on and on. Though both men were bored by the charade, neither knew any mechanism to avoid its time-honoured practice. In the end, the cantina owner successfully crossed into los Estados Unidos, his pocket lightened by exactly one dollar. The transit visa never manifested itself.
He rode towards the main street of Del Rio, Texas, which lay about a half-mile west of the international bridge. After leaving his burro tied to a hitching post next to a row of automobiles, he entered the town’s department store, promptly left through the rear entrance, and doubled back until he reached the Stonewall Hotel, a plain, five-storey grey-brick building that was known for having the first and only elevator in the town of Del Rio. The building was fronted by a large rectangular lawn dotted with acacia shrubs. It was here that Dr. Brinkley’s clinic operated from the top two floors. Out back, Carlos could hear the bleating of penned Toggenburg goats.
After a series of quick side-to-side glances, the cantina owner stepped into the elevator, his apprehension overcome by the novelty of this experience. He debarked on the fourth floor and found a door marked Reception. He removed his hat and entered a roomful of men hiding behind magazine covers. He then approached a receptionist seated at a desk towards one end of the room. She wore a denim shirt with a galaxy of stitching.
