The Skull of Pancho Villa and Other Stories

by Manuel Ramos

“Sure.” She paused for a few seconds. “I can do that. A week. No sweat.”

  González had to sell the idea to Donley.

  Rose was ready to testify and Donley had memorized his arguments. He wanted his court costs, the rent for March and something for cleaning up after Pauline and Joey.

  “Look around you, Donley. The courtroom is packed. Judge Kerso is still on the 8:30 returns and it’s already 9:45. He’s up there giving lawyers hell for not knowing their cases should have been assigned to Courtroom 9-H. He’s only warming up. It will be 11:00 by the time he gets to us. And sure, he’s going to tell Pauline and Joey to move their junk, but I’m going to convince him that you rented a place that doesn’t meet the Housing Code. He’s likely to order the Health Department out to your place just so they can close you up for a while.”

  “González, you must think I’m an idiot. You know he can’t do that. He’s not on the Code Enforcement docket anymore.”

  “No, but he sure as hell would rather be there than in this courtroom listening to all this bullshit. His old habits are going to take time to break, Donley. You know we’re going to be here until this afternoon, which means a simple eviction will throw off his whole docket today. He won’t like that, especially when I let him know we were willing to move out if you hadn’t been so stubborn about trying to get some money out of these people. You ever hear about blood out of a turnip?”

  Donley agreed to give Pauline a week.

  On the way out of the courthouse Pauline touched González’s arm and told him thanks. He could not shake the feeling that he had missed something.

  The next day started badly for González. His beat-up van gave out on him on the Speer Boulevard viaduct. He backed up traffic for two miles before he found the loose ignition wire and managed to tighten it enough to make it to the office.

  The uneasiness that started during Pauline’s case returned. He felt on the edge.

  The receptionist chewed him out for not telling her he would be late. He grunted and picked up a dozen telephone messages form his mail slot, all marked “urgent.” His desk was stacked with intake sheets, all marked “urgent.” Case files littered the floor, the bookcases and the tops of filing cabinets.

  He loosened his tie, shut the door and turned on his radio. Music from The Blasters asked him if he was going to have a time tonight. He nodded his head to the beat as he waited for calls from clients stuck in crap up to their elbows. They would continue almost nonstop until lunch when González escaped for some green chile and a beer at Joe’s Buffet on Santa Fe.

  That afternoon the chile churned angrily in the pit of his stomach when his secretary told him Crazy Chuck was in the waiting room. Chuck wanted to talk about a few problems at the projects.

  Charles Luévano was a big, muscular Chicano in his late forties who had spent more time in prison than his age would allow, or so he said. González had seen his record and he was amazed at the list of burglaries, hold-ups, assaults, drug busts and bad checks. How many crimes can one man commit in one life? González guessed that Chuck was free because he was stone crazy, loco, “a few problems with my head.” You had to be a little insane to survive on the streets.

  Chuck loved to talk. He could go on for hours about things that made no sense but that, according to Chuck, required the immediate filing of a complaint in federal court because his “civil and due process rights were abridged, man.”

  González stared at the hulking, fidgety man. Chuck had salt and pepper hair brushed straight back from his forehead. The rolled-up sleeves of his blue work shirt revealed tattooed roses, initials, crosses and a leaping black panther.

  The uneasiness had turned into a pounding knot lodged in the middle of the lawyer’s forehead.

  “Mira, ese. I got to have something done, m-a-a-an. Those white devils in the housing are going to spray my place for cockroaches, and I ain’t got none, man. That spray only kills me. It don’t do nothin’ to those bugs. They been around for a million years. What do those honkies know about killin’ those bugs? My system won’t put up with that stuff, man. I’m allergic to that spray, it screws up my lungs, makes me cough. Shit, man, that shit will kill me before any of those goddamned roaches kick. They just sprayed last year and what happened? Not a goddamned thing, except to me, man. I’m disabled, a ward of the government, they can’t do this to me. They know how bad I am. I got a bullet in my gut.” He lifted his shirt and showed González the scar. “And they want to spray with some poison that will just jack me up, m-a-a-an.”

  His words came out in a slow, sinusy whine.

  “You know me, man, I’m an old tecato. I seen it all and the chotas know it. They’re out to get me for years. They got snitches all over the projects, watching me, trying to get me to do some really funny shit. Out of nowhere, they come up to me and try to sell me shit man, shit like I ain’t seen for years, shit that even the goddamned mayor can’t get, and they want to sell it to me, man, me.” He thumped his chest with the palm of his hand and González jumped at the hollow sound. “Why, ese, why to me all of a sudden? Because they got me labeled a career criminal. Shit, I ain’t no career criminal, man. I ain’t got no money like a career criminal should have. If I did would I be talkin’ to legal aid? Hell no. I’d be talkin’ to some fancy defense lawyer, but my jacket says career criminal, m-a-a-an.”

  González needed help. The bad feeling had festered and burst into a melancholy hysteria. He saw drunken Pauline standing shakily in the courthouse hall, leaning on him, grabbing at his coat, thanking him with words that reached into his throat and gagged him.

  An odor of a thousand other clients mixed with that of Pauline and Chuck filled his nostrils. He smelled despair, fear, weakness. He was suffocating. His fingers scratched for fresh air.

  Chuck rambled on about white devils and cockroaches.

  Sweat popped out on the skin beneath the lawyer’s moustache. He started to laugh; tears rolled down his face.

  He stood up.

  Chuck stopped in mid-sentence, open-mouthed, outcrazied by his own lawyer.

  González watched himself grab the larger man by the head and ram his face into the wall. Blood spurted from the skull and flowed onto yellow sheets of paper and manila folders. Chuck slumped to the floor and González was free.

  He ran out of the office and into the coffee room. His hands shook as he poured a cup of the day-old, bitter liquid. He took a long drink. He talked to himself to try to gain control. His breath escaped in heavy, rushing surges, and chills crawled up his spine.

  González knew he would go back to his dreary office and listen to Crazy Chuck for as long as the man could talk and at the end he would treat him like a real client, offer advice on dealing with the killer cockroach spray and shake his hand goodbye. And he would do the same for the client after Chuck, for the next Pauline and for all the others.

  González made a living representing crazies, weirdos, misfits, losers and plain folks who got taken. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish between client and lawyer, sanity and craziness. But each morning he reminded himself he was not a burned out liberal who took up space on legal aid’s payroll. He was an ace attorney for the underdog.

  WHEN PIGS FLY AND MONKEYS TALK

  Black lightening twisted across the red sky. “Winter,” Cantú mumbled. She thumped the control panel and Sanitex snapped over the porthole.

  She tightened her tunic as though the silver crystals had already started to fall. The rigo skin deflected moisture but it was useless for warmth.

  “What do I expect from a flying pig?”

  She trudged around the accumulated junk spread throughout the Shak3. Pumps and pipe sections blocked the rear exit. Somewhere in the clutter a sand monkey huddled among discarded circuit boards. The smelly thing treasured scrap as food. Cantú appreciated that it had quit screeching and jabbering at her.

  The portable shelter trembled. Cantú twitched when she heard the high-pitched whine.

  She tapped Latif’s numbers on her
digi-tel. Her partner’s hairy face glowed from the small screen.

  “What the hell you doin’ out there? Can’t you feel that wind?”

  Latif’s voice cracked through Cantú’s headphones. “I’m trying to get back. If you haven’t noticed, it’s a little tough moving around this goddamned planet. The Oscar is stuck in some kind of mush and I don’t really want to walk in the open. I’m waiting out the wind in a crag hole. I’m not that far away.”

  “What do you mean, waiting out? This could go on for weeks. What about the wind snakes? You want to hassle with those?”

  The screen blinked, then faded to gray. Either Latif had hung up or the wind had cut off access, again.

  What a nightmare assignment. Coughing fits from the acrid, metallic atmosphere that lasted for hours; weird, hungry creatures; and a climate fit only for rocks and gray scrub. But there was oil—at least something that might be used as oil. The lab boys called it Synth, short for synthetic, she figured, but it floated naturally on the puddles of smoking liquid that dotted the otherwise barren landscape. She and Latif had been told to never touch the stuff—the standard bureaucratic caution. No one knew what Synth was, but that didn’t matter to corporate. The potential payoff canceled any concern about the actual risks. If the wages weren’t so good, she would have quit a long time ago.

  Latif’s shriek wrenched her eyes from the blank digi-tel. Her co-worker stumbled into the Shak3. Synth clung to Latif like a mercurial cocoon.

  “I fell . . . I can’t breathe.” Latif clawed at his own chest.

  Cantú recoiled when Latif burst into flames. The wind swallowed her scream. The burning man collapsed at Cantú’s feet. A trickle of blue flowed from the crackling corpse. The thin stream moved towards Cantú. She turned to run but a slimy chord grabbed her ankle. The sinewy fluid latched onto her legs and crawled up to her mouth. It forced her teeth open, sliced her tongue. Oil filled her throat.

  A small, furry face peered from under a pile of useless computers. The sand monkey watched Cantú burn.

  “I tried to warn them,” the ambassador later reported. “It’s not my fault.”

  OUTLAWS

  THE SKULL OF PANCHO VILLA

  You’ve heard the story, maybe read something about it in the newspaper or a magazine. How Pancho Villa’s grave was robbed in 1926 and his head taken. Emil Homdahl, a mercenary and pre-CIA spy, what they used to call a soldier of fortune, is usually “credited” with the theft. He was arrested in Mexico but quickly released because of lack of evidence—some say because of political pressure from north of the border. Eventually, the story goes, he sold his trophy to Prescott Bush, grandfather of you-know-who. And now the skull is stashed at a fancy college back East. The story has legs, as they say. There are websites about Pancho and his missing skull, and I heard about a recent book that runs with the legend, featuring Homdahl, a mystery writer, and a bag full of skulls, all the way to a bloody shoot-out ending. Haven’t read it, so don’t know for sure.

  That’s all bull, of course. Oh yeah, Villa’s corpse is minus a skull but Homdahl never had it, the poor sap. The thing is that everyone overlooks one detail. There was another guy arrested with Homdahl, a Chicano from Los Angeles by the name of Alberto Corral. I’m serious—you can look it up. He was quickly released, too, and then he disappeared off the historical page, unlike Homdahl, who apparently liked the attention and actually enjoyed his grave-robbing notoriety. Corral’s role in the tale is given short shrift, something we Chicanos understand all too well. If he’s remembered at all, it’s as Homdahl’s flunky, the muscle who dug up the grave or broke into the tomb, depending on the version of the story, and who was paid with a few pesos and a bottle of tequila while the gringo made twenty-five grand off old man Bush.

  Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Gus Corral is off on another wild hair, this time about his great-grandfather. And I could do that, easy. But that’s not it. Whatever happened eighty years ago, happened. I don’t know why Grandpa Alberto ended up with the skull and I don’t care. No one ever told me how he was connected to Homdahl or whatever possessed him to want to steal Pancho’s head, and I don’t expect to find out. All I know is that the skull has been taken care of by the Corral family for as long as I can remember. Wrapped in old rags and then plastic bags and stored in various containers like hatboxes, cardboard chests and even a see-through case designed for a basketball, you know, for sports collectors. Whispered about by the kids who caught glimpses of the creepy yellowish thing whenever the adults dragged it out, usually on the nights when the tequila and beer and whiskey flowed long and strong.

  My grandmother Otilia sang to it, the “Corrido de Pancho Villa,” of course. The tiny, dark old woman, hunched under a shawl and often with a red bandana wrapped around her gray, fine hair, drank slowly from a glass of whiskey while she stared at the box that held Panchito, that’s what she called it, for several minutes, and meanwhile all the kids waited for what we knew was coming. And then, without warning, Otilia would rip off the box, grab the skull, expose it to the light, and simultaneously burst into weepy lyrics about the Robin Hood of Mexico. One of my uncles, also into his cups, would join in by strumming loudly on an old guitar. Shouts and whoops and ay-yi-yis erupted from whoever else was in the house and the little kids would scatter from the room, shrieking and crying, while us older ones were hypnotized by the dark eye sockets and crooked teeth of the skull of Pancho Villa.

  You can imagine what a jolt it was when the skull was stolen from my sister’s house.

  Corrine—she’s the oldest, and the flakiest—called me one night, around midnight. Not all that unusual, if you know Corrine. One crisis after another, I swear. One of her boys (they all got brats of their own but Corrine still calls them her boys) needs to get bailed out and do I have about five hundred dollars? Or she slipped and banged up her knee and can’t walk or drive and can I pick her up for bingo? Or the latest love of her sad life went out for a six-pack and hasn’t come back, about a week ago, and could I go look for him?

  I knew she shouldn’t have the skull but she is the oldest and when only the three of us remained—my younger sister, Maxine, is cute and naïve (I didn’t say stupid) but that’s another story—Corrine claimed rights to the skull and took it out of our parents’ house before Max or I knew what was happening. Which was ironic. Corrine always said she hated that “disgusting cosa.” But there she was, all over Panchito like he was gold. I kind of understood. Panchito was one of the few things our parents left us and just about the only connection we had to the old-timers of the family.

  Anyway, Corrine is totally unreliable—maybe you picked up on that? I’m not perfect, no way, but at least I got a job managing my ex-wife’s segunda over on Thirty-second. Six days a week, from opening at nine in the morning until Sylvia, the ex, shows up around two in the afternoon. I’m also the night watchman, which means I sleep in the place so I don’t have to worry about rent as long as I don’t go back to the store until Sylvia leaves. Sylvia provides a cot but she won’t say more than two words to me even when she digs into the cash register and calculates my weekly pay. We both like it like that.

  I argued with Corrine about Panchito. I pointed out that the parade of losers that camped out at her house were a major security risk. I added that I could keep the skull at Sylvia’s shop. It fit in with the musty junk Sylvia thinks are antiques, but she clutched that skull like a baby and it was clear that the only way I would get my hands on it was to rip it from hers, which I wasn’t going to even attempt. Corrine has like fifty pounds on me.

  She had Panchito for about a year, and I hadn’t thought about it. The call woke me from a mixed-up dream. I crawled off my cot and answered the shop’s phone.

  “You got your nerve, Gus!” she shouted over the line. “I can’t believe you took it. What’d you do, pawn it for beer money?”

  “What the hell are you screaming about? It’s midnight, in case you didn’t know.”

  I’m not quick with the comebac
ks with Corrine. She’s always intimidated me that way, since we were kids.

  “Panchito! Panchito!”

  As if that explained everything.

  A half hour later I had the story and she started to believe that I hadn’t broken into her house and stolen the skull. She had come home from an evening with the girls—right—and found the back door wide open and a pair of her panties on the lawn. She freaked immediately and called the cops. She waited outside, not chancing that the intruder might still be inside. When the cops gave her the all-clear, she entered a house torn upside down and inside out. Her clothes were scattered everywhere, drawers were ripped from dressers, bowls of food dripped on the kitchen floor and a trail of CD cases snaked from her CD player to the useless back door. The final straw made her hysterical. A large wet stain of piss sat in the middle of her carpet.

  Did she think I was really capable of that? I could see how she might be suspicious of me concerning the skull, but to trash her place and pee on her rug? Please.

  The cops said that they couldn’t find any evidence of a forced entry so they concluded that Corrine left the back door open and one of the neighborhood kids probably saw it from the alley. A crime of opportunity, they told her. I can see her face when she heard that. She must have screamed that she was absolutely sure she had locked the door and then most likely she turned into a blubbery mess, but she was just covering. Corrine often forgot to lock up. Attention to detail never was one of her strong points. One time she came home and found a pot of beans completely black, the beans nothing more than a congealed mass, and smoke as thick as her chubby arms filling every room. A fire truck pulled up a few minutes later. It was months before the drapes and walls didn’t smell like burned beans. She told me she couldn’t remember doing anything with beans, much less leaving the stove on. A classic bit of Corrine.

  I had to agree with the cops. The way Corrine’s house was wrecked and the stuff that was taken—CDs, video tapes, a jar full of pennies and a bag of potato chips—sounded like a kid’s thing. But what the hell would he do with a skull?