So Far From God

by John Harris

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Florentino Vegas. He beat the peóns. He’s with the army now.’ She was merely making conversation, distant, lacking the enthusiasm there had always been before. ‘There’s another one now, just as bad. Did you see Fausto at Escotadura? I told him you were there.’

  ‘I saw him,’ Slattery said shortly.

  His manner was enough to dissuade her from any show of warmth. ‘We’re going to Córdoba and Veracruz,’ she said. ‘To clear up contracts.’

  ‘It’s Zapata’s territory down there.’

  ‘Mexicans always let music through.’

  ‘I don’t think Zapata’s very concerned with music.’

  Stutzmann began to push his cast towards the motor cars. Magdalena gazed at Slattery for a long moment, her eyes on his face as though she were nailing it to her memory.

  ‘Goodbye, Slattery.’

  He watched the vehicles as they moved away, a forest of waving arms and handkerchieves, the high twittering voices of the company rising above the sound of the engines. Then Stutzmann started a song from The Gypsy Baron, and the vehicles rolled towards the river, the sound growing fainter until they finally disappeared.

  The twenty-four hours Slattery remained in El Paso had a strange quality to them. For some reason he had a feeling he was being watched and on one occasion he was very nearly knocked down by a motor car which didn’t stop.

  ‘Goddam drivers,’ Atty snorted as he hauled Slattery upright. ‘They buy an automobile, spend ten minutes finding out what the levers and switches are for, then ’tes out on the road, large as life and twice as nasty, trying to kill everybody in sight.’

  Heading south again to Chihuahua, near Gallego they were stopped by a troop of horsemen, stationed across the road in a wide half-circle.

  ‘Alto!’ one of them shouted. ‘Stop the engine!’

  Atty refused and the man who had spoken rode forward. He had a revolver in his hand, and Slattery was just about to rise in his seat when the weapon came up. With a sweep of his arm, Atty slammed him down again and opened the throttle just as the bullet starred the windscreen.

  As the Studebaker leapt forward, they could hear shots thudding into the tonneau of the vehicle. Slattery’s hat was whipped from his head then, with horses rearing and flashing hooves hanging over their heads, they were through. Only two men waited ahead but, as Atty drove straight at them, they swung aside and one of the horses went down with a crash, the rider sprawled alongside it. Bullets were still whacking into the rear of the car and Atty was crossing himself furiously.

  ‘Holy Jesus,’ he was saying. ‘Don’t let ’em hit a tyre!’

  Eventually the horsemen dropped out of sight and Atty eased his foot off the accelerator and looked at Slattery.

  ‘You been bad-mouthin’ somebody, me dear?’ he asked. ‘Or have ’ee been upsetting Magdalena so she wants your head on a pole? A lot of fellers seem to want ’ee dead all of a sudden.’

  When they returned to Chihuahua, Villa was still raging about the orders he had received to move south. From Juárez on the American border down to Mexico City the railway divided the country into two halves, crossing desert and mountain for two thousand miles, and along it had sprung up a series of important military posts with Torréon the key to them all. Though Obregón was driving down from Sonora and another army was still trying to move down the east coast, it was Villa who had the key route and outside Juárez ten enormous trains waited in the desert, the horses tied to the mesquite among the hanging sarapes and the strips of drying meat.

  ‘We’re not ready,’ Villa insisted furiously. ‘We’re short of ammunition! We’re short of artillery! Herrera hasn’t arrived! Urbina’s got rheumatism again! Besides’ – he looked sheepish and Slattery knew he was thinking of the girl he was courting – ‘I’m busy just now.’

  The camps began to spring up, everybody disappointed that there was to be no move. But Villa was adamant. ‘I need to gather guns. I need Urbina. It’s all right for that old fool, Don Venus, to push for an advance, but he doesn’t have to make the arrangements. I stay here! Until I’m ready. Nothing anybody says will move me!’

  There seemed to be no argument and Slattery was just arranging with Atty to have the Studebaker removed from the flat car where it had been lashed for the move south when Jesús appeared at the run.

  ‘Mi Coronel,’ he yelled. ‘The General wants you!’

  The faces at headquarters showed that another crisis had blown up. An English rancher had been shot dead, and Villa’s face was dark with rage. ‘What do I do, inglés?’ he demanded. ‘What would your king do? He pulled a gun on me.’

  Clanking across the room, he turned on his heel, his face flushed. ‘The Norteamericanos are demanding action,’ he stormed. ‘They’re talking of invasion.’

  That eternal bogey of the Mexicans, invasion from the north, was before them again. No matter how much they boasted of their ability to handle it, they were terrified of the possibility.

  ‘They’re asking for details of the trial.’ Villa gestured angrily. ‘He didn’t have a trial, damn it! He came in here saying we’d stolen his cattle. Perhaps we had – I don’t know – so I ordered Fierro to get rid of him. I told them he was shot, but now that fool, Fierro, tells me he didn’t shoot him. He took him outside and hit him on the head.’ He scowled. ‘Well, I’ve had him dug up, shot and buried again, so they can’t argue with that.’ The heavy head went down. ‘There’s too much going on around here, inglés.’ He gestured at the men about him. ‘Let’s get the boys aboard and start the trains moving. It’s time we were heading for Torreón.’

  Six

  In the middle of the desert a battered water tank, a half-demolished station and a siding comprised the town. Around it men were camped in the chaparral, among the carts and guns and piles of equipment, watching cavalry mounts being unloaded. Covered with sweat, a ragged soldier plunged into the centre of a crowded cattle car and, dodging the flying hooves, swung himself on to a horse’s back. As he jammed in his spurs and yelled, the boxcar’s side seemed to bulge under the drumming of hooves as the frightened animals surged about inside. A horse fell backwards out of the door on to the sand at the side of the track, rolled over and picked itself up, terrified. After it came more horses and mules in ones and twos and groups, jumping or falling, then scrambling to their feet to flee in terror, their nostrils flaring, their eyes bulging. The watching men were swinging their reatas and running through the choking cloud of dust, and the nervous animals began to circle in panic as officers, orderlies and soldiers searching for their steeds swung to their backs and tried to gallop out of the confusion.

  As the horses were ridden clear, kicking mules were backed up to the shafts of artillery caissons, watched by foot soldiers looking for their units. From the top of the boxcars where they were camped under their little tents of sarapes and umbrellas, the wives, the soldaderas and the children watched as the stragglers trudged past, shouting down for news of husbands and sons and friends. Occasionally, as a man complained that he hadn’t eaten in days, one of the women tossed him down a stale tortilla in return for a cigarette. Round the engines, more women were demanding water, ignoring the curses of the driver who was threatening to shoot them if they came any nearer.

  Villa had begun his move against Torreón. Without a word of warning, he had closed telephone and telegraph lines and stopped all mail and railroad traffic, then his vast serpent of troop trains had slowly begun to head south. The little towns that lay astride the route – Camargo, Rellano, Jiménez – were all already written into the Villa legend from the days of Madero’s rebellion.

  In addition to agents and diplomats, Jiménez was full of newspapermen, all wanting to know when the fighting was going to start. Among them, to Slattery’s surprise, was Horrocks. He was wearing an alpaca jacket, white duck trousers, spats and a solar topee.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Slattery demanded.

  ‘Come to see you.’


  ‘I’m not interested.’

  ‘You’d better be. Graf’s here and he doesn’t like you.’

  ‘I don’t like him very much.’

  ‘He’s watching you. Did you know?’

  ‘I had an idea he might be.’

  ‘He’d like to remove you.’

  ‘I had an idea about that, too.’

  Horrocks shrugged. ‘Amaryllis is in Mexico City, by the way. I think she’s picked up your trail.’

  ‘Did you help her?’

  Horrocks looked shocked. ‘I’m not interested in what you do after dark,’ he said.

  ‘What are you interested in?’

  ‘Keeping the old eyes and ears open. Things have changed in London, y’know. There’s a new professionalism there. About time, too, because the Germans have widened the Kiel Canal. Now what could that be for, except to get their dreadnoughts into the North Sea against our fleet?’ He lit a cigarette but didn’t bother to offer one to Slattery. ‘We’ve just withdrawn recognition of Huerta, incidentally.’

  ‘American pressure?’

  ‘We try to oblige. That means he’s in trouble. And that pleases Washington. But the Germans are still behind him. They’ve offered him aid and we know they’re loading arms in Hamburg for Veracruz. We even know the ships: Ypiranga, Bavaria and Kronprinzessin Cecilie.’

  ‘Do the Americans know?’

  Horrocks looked absorbed. ‘We’re wondering whether to pass on the information,’ he said.

  Horrocks disappeared as suddenly as he’d appeared, but for once Slattery wasn’t certain he was glad to see the back of him. There were too many questions to ask. Jiménez was a wartime centre and a third-rate company performing at the theatre only brought nostalgia. Old Stutzmann posters announcing Magdalena Graf were all over the town, shabby and dog-eared now that the company had moved on, and often obscured by the posters of the new company. Slattery found himself stopping in front of them to read the names.

  He was certain now that he had backed the wrong side, yet was unable to see an alternative. Villa’s reputation would always exclude him from real power in Mexico. But, while Carranza offered legality, he also offered a reputation for corruption and a totally indefensible personality. If Villa could never become the ruler of Mexico because of his past, it seemed that Carranza could never become the ruler because he was totally unlovable.

  The dilapidated main street was full of soldiers, and a single streetcar pulled by a staggering mule came past crammed with drunken Villistas. Carriages full of officers and girls sheered out of its way as it went by. The Divisione del Norte was making up for lost time or for the time that might never be, and every window contained a girl talking in low tones to a sarape-wrapped man. The night was cold and through the darkness came the sound of guitars, snatches of song, laughter and low voices. In the dark back streets there were shouts and even an occasional shot fired by some light-hearted soldier. A regimental band was playing in the square near a statue of the deposed dictator, Porfirio Díaz, which nobody had bothered to push off its pedestal.

  Hundreds of little electric bulbs had been switched on about the plaza for the paseo, and a column of young men was going one way, another of girls going the other. Occasionally they threw handfuls of confetti at each other or slipped a note across, but no words were exchanged and the paseo never stopped and no one let their interest be too obvious, because if you picked someone else’s girl by mistake it could be a killing matter. At one side of the plaza lay the ruins of a store looted when the army had arrived and at the other the ancient pink cathedral among the fountains and trees. By the entrance men were buying drinks from a stall.

  Troops of horsemen, faces shadowed by the brims of their conical hats, jingled past. One of the riders was Florentino Vegas, of Villa’s Holy Trinity, Graf’s old mayordomo, huddled in the saddle, his hat down over his eyes, his sarape up over his chin.

  ‘Looks as if he’s plotting a murder,’ Atty said.

  The following morning, arriving at the headquarters caboose, they found Villa in a bad temper; the Holy Trinity, Carranza’s group of young envoys, was no longer complete.

  ‘Somebody shot Preto,’ Villa said. ‘They found him on the corner of the street with three bullets in him. You know Preto, inglés. He liked to dress like you. Why should anyone want to shoot him? Perhaps someone mistook him for you.’ He grinned and gestured indifferently. ‘There’s one of Carranza’s chocolateros in the hotel near the station. Let him know what happened.’

  Vegas was riding towards headquarters as Slattery headed for town. As he saw Slattery, he reined in sharply to stare at him, then swung his horse away and set his spurs savagely into it.

  The old American woman who ran the hotel was in the habit of refusing entry to anyone she disapproved of. She had the Stars and Stripes over the door and didn’t like Mexicans. She studied Slattery with suspicion, but it turned out she had an Irish grandfather and she spotted his accent at once.

  ‘In there,’ she said, indicating the salon.

  Two men were sitting inside, smoking long Mexican cigarillos, cups of chocolate on the table before them. One of them was Sjogren, the Swede, dressed in a lavender suit with spats, a red carnation in his buttonhole. The other was Fausto Graf. With them was a woman and, though she had her back to him, Slattery could see she had peroxided hair and that her face was painted. There was something familiar about her.

  ‘Look who’s here,’ Sjogren said sharply as Slattery appeared. It seemed almost like a warning.

  Graf rose to his feet quickly, looking curiously uncertain for once. As the woman turned her head, Slattery saw it was Consuela Lidgett.

  The silence became embarrassing, and she spoke nervously. ‘I didn’t go home,’ she said, giving Slattery a defiant look. ‘There’s nothin’ to go home for, now.’

  Graf was watching Slattery closely. He seemed surprised to see him and for once appeared to be stuck for something to say. Then his brows came down and he gestured to Consuela who rose and disappeared without a word.

  ‘Affairs of state?’ Sjogren asked, leaning forward.

  ‘Not your state,’ Slattery snapped and Sjogren’s face grew pink.

  ‘Not even your state, Fausto,’ Slattery said. ‘Unless you’re here as Carranza’s representative. You’d better inform him that one of his observers with Villa’s army’s just been shot dead.’

  As Slattery left, Consuela was sitting in the hall. As he appeared she rose, clearly uncomfortable in front of him. She was wearing new clothes but she looked sulky, the expression odd against the harsh newly-blonde hair and painted lips.

  ‘I came here after Escotadura,’ she said. ‘It seemed okay, so I stayed.’

  ‘Newspaper started helping again?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘They gave up. But I’m livin’. Kinda livin’, anyway. I ran out of dough.’

  ‘I could let you have money.’

  Tears started to her eyes. ‘I don’t want your dough,’ she said. ‘I’ll manage. I earn it. It was easier than I expected. The first time was with someone I knew.’

  ‘Fausto Graf?’

  She didn’t answer. It had come as something of a shock to her to find that sex could be different from the rough and ready tumblings with Loyce Lidgett. She had often been warned of the sins of adultery but felt that Lidgett’s unfaithfulness excused her. ‘I picked the wrong guy is all,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I guess I’ll stay here. Fausto’s offered to look after me. I was a fool, believing in that Loyce. I’m never going back to Gordonsboro! That’s for sure. Relatives leaning over your shoulder, telling you what to do. “Good boy, Loyce,” they said. “Just the sort to give a girl a good time.” Sure he could. Any girl. All girls. But not often me. I’m okay, Slattery. The Mexicans don’t worry so much about morals and Fausto says he’ll marry me.’

  Slattery drew a deep breath. ‘He’s married already, Consuela,’ he said quietly.

  It wasn’t hard to arrange for a pass that would enab
le Consuela to ride the trains to the border. The information that battles were pending and that Graf had lied to her had finally convinced her she should leave.

  ‘I guess I’ll go,’ she said. ‘But not back to Gordonsboro.’

  Because the line north of Jiménez was jammed with Villa’s rolling stock, Slattery arranged for Atty to drive her to Camargo to pick up a train and gave him instructions to stay with her until she climbed aboard.

  Preto was buried with all due honours. Because there were no gun carriages to spare, the coffin was placed in the back of a cart which had carried vegetables the day before and had been scrubbed out for the occasion. A flag covered the body and the driver wore a long drape of black crepe round his sombrero. Villa and his staff stumped along with the priests and acolytes and the soldiers carrying the wreaths. Behind them shuffled a crowd of officers and soldiers, and behind them again the ordinary townspeople, none of whom had known Preto but all of them true Mexicans with no intention of missing any ceremonial occasion which might brighten their lives. The arrival and departure of trains was regarded in the same spirit. Their mourning was blacker than any other mourning in the world and made their dark faces look green. Afterwards, there was a sombre meal to eat before returning to headquarters. Atty was waiting with the Studebaker.

  ‘She didn’t turn up, me dear,’ he said. ‘The old touch at the hotel said she’d caught a train to Mexico City instead.’

  ‘Why? Did she say?’

  Atty shrugged. ‘What she’s at these days, me dear, is more profitable in Mexico City than along the border.’

  There was nothing they could do about it. Consuela had made her own decision. Instead, they found a bar and sat drinking for a while and speculating on who had shot Preto.

  ‘’Twasn’t a quarrelsome feller he was,’ Atty pointed out. ‘Not the sort to pull a gun on anybody.’