by James Blake
Sofía Reina looked from one to the other of them, her eyes shining. She reached across the table and took each one by a hand. “Gracias, mijos,” she said. “Con todo mi corazón. Gracias.”
THE UNCAGED
They broke through the gate, howling like fiends. The guards stood no chance. Many of them threw down their weapons and surrendered, pleading for mercy. And were eviscerated, pulped, quartered, decapitated. Screams of agony and of exultation. The warden was dragged out into the main yard and doused with oil and strung up by his feet and set afire. Everything of wood in flame, everything of paper. Among the first to reach the armory were Juan Lobo and his henchmen—Fat Pori, Sarmiento One-Eye, Ugly Dax, the three with whom he had ruled a prison block for the last nine years. With rifles in hand they ran out to the main yard where he and Sarmiento caught riderless mounts and Pori and Dax shot men out of the saddle for their horses. They rode away with the attackers and camped with them that night, but the rebels were going in the wrong direction, and in the morning he and his trio and ten others recruited to his party reversed to eastward. They plundered as they went. He taught himself to shoot by shooting people. There were challengers to his leadership and he fought and killed them each in turn in front of the spectating others. They crossed the sierras, descended to the valley roads, dodged army patrols and the Guardia Rural. Their number increased. He did not know the country they passed through nor the names of the villages they left smoldering behind them. But he knew where he was going, and every man of them, now almost fifty strong, believed his promise of ample and easy pickings. He had his mother’s map branded in his brain. Could yet see her finger tapping the spot as she said, Right there, Juanito, right there! And as surely as a raptor winging for home he bore toward Buenaventura.
And arrived on a warm June morning.
John Samuel wakes to blastings of gunfire, cries of panic and anguish, lunatic howling. He fumbles for his spectacles and goes to the window and opens the shutters to a daybreak vision of apocalypse. Horsemen amok in the plaza, shooting people, hacking them, throwing torches through windows, onto rooftops. Sees more of them in the courtyard below. The bloody bodies of casa grande servants. There are crashings downstairs, gunshots, terrified cries. Hard thumpings of boots in the hallway. His door bangs open and he stands stricken as men of wild aspect rush in, one hollering, Don’t kill the fucker, don’t kill him, the chief said! He is grabbed by each arm and propelled from the room unshod and in his nightshirt, pulled stumbling down the stairs, his thin gray hair disheveled, skinny legs flashing with each flap of his nightshirt. He sees draperies afire, broken furniture burning, white-eyed mounts stamping through the salon and down the hallways. Then out into the burning compound hazed with smoke and strident with the cries of the dying, the maimed. Women wailing over the dead and in desperate attendance to the wounded. The shooting now reducing to sporadic reports. He is yanked along to the plaza fountain where Bruno Tomás sits on the ground, bareheaded and in shirtsleeves, a man with an eye patch standing over him, pistol in hand. Three years older than John Samuel, sixty-year-old Bruno yet has thick hair more black than gray, but his face is now bloody, one eye purple and swollen shut, nose obviously broken.
They jerk John Samuel to a halt in front of a man sitting on the rim of the fountain and eating a mango. He is flanked by two men, one fat and smiling, the other with hideous burn scars on one side of his face. At their feet are three strongboxes. John Samuel recognizes the one from the rear room of the main kitchen and the two that had been locked in the armory, but he does not see the two boxes kept cached under the stone floor of his office, which is at that moment pouring smoke from its windows. The man eating the mango tosses the half-eaten fruit into the fountain and wipes his mouth and fingers with his shirt and stands up. “Yo soy Juan Lobo,” he says. “Mi mamá se llamó Katrina Ávila. ¿Te acuerdas de ella?”
John Samuel sees the madness in the man’s eyes. “Katrina Ávila?” he says.
Juan Lobo punches him hard in the mouth, jarring the spectacles off his face and knocking him down. Two men haul him back up to his feet. He tastes blood and feels the sudden bloating of his lips and chokes on a dislodged front tooth and tries to cough it up but swallows it.
Juan Lobo picks up the spectacles and puts them on and looks all about, squinting. Then takes them off and snaps the lenses out of the rims and sets the frame back on his face and grins at his men. Then turns back to John Samuel and says, Your father fucked my mother for his fun, and then when he became my father he sent us away. But. I am now here to say—he spreads his arms wide and grins with great exaggeration—Helllooo, brother!
Certain that he is going to be killed, John Samuel is crying now, gasping, mucus streaming from his nose, blood from his mouth.
Lobo gestures about the plaza and says, These, ah, people tell me somebody gutted your father a long time ago. They tell me the twin ones were killed for something to do with the same thing. Have I been told the truth?
John Samuel stutters, gags on snot, manages to say, Yes, it’s the truth, yes.
Aaaah Christ, Juan Lobo says, shaking his head. I knew it was too much to hope for that the old cocksucker would still be alive, but, goddammit, the twin ones dead too? He smiles at John Samuel in the manner of a commiserative friend and says, I feel soooo cheated, you know what I mean? But what the hell, my brother—and he again makes the open-armed gesture—there’s still you! Then loses his smile and snatches John Samuel by the hair and shoves his head back and draws his knife and puts it to his throat.
John Samuel whimpers and pisses in his pants.
Somebody shouts, Don’t do it! Listen, listen! I know where they are! They’re not dead!
Juan Lobo looks over at Bruno Tomás. He steps back from John Samuel and gestures for the guard to help the mayordomo get up, and then beckons Bruno to him. Bruno comes limping. His only hope to save John Samuel is in giving Juan Lobo what he wants. The twins can look out for themselves.
He stands before Lobo, who says, You’re a very helpful man, Mr Old Mayordomo. It was helpful to show us where the money was, though of course you only did that to save your hide. But nevertheless it was helpful. And now you want to tell me where the twin ones are. That would also be very helpful. He taps the knifepoint on Bruno’s chest and says, But. Everybody else, you see, says the twin ones have been dead as long as their fucking father. Soooo. What can I think except you want to lie to me to try to save this son of a whore? He runs the knife up to Bruno’s throat and the point forms a dimple in the skin. You have fucked yourself out of our deal, Mr Mayordomo.
I’m not lying. They’re at the Río Bravo. I have letters to prove it. Letters that tell about them. With addresses, with postmarks.
Oh? Where are they, these letters?
I’ll tell you if you won’t kill the patrón.
It’s a deal. Where are the letters?
How do I know you won’t kill the patrón anyway? Bruno says—and glances at John Samuel, who is squinting at him as if trying to comprehend some alien language.
Very good question, says Juan Lobo. But your bigger worry should be whether I’ll kill you anyway.
Yes. How do I know you won’t do that?
Juan Lobo issues a loud mock sigh and lowers the knife and calls for two saddled mounts. The horses are brought and he has John Samuel—still dazed with fear, confused by the proceedings—helped up onto one. He tells Bruno the other horse is for him. But listen, Lobo says. A man’s word is the only thing in this world worth more than gold, don’t you agree? Well, I give you my word—my word!—that if the letters prove what you say, you and this cocksucker can ride out of here. But if they don’t, I’ll kill you both. You have my word on that too.
Bruno points to his quarters and specifies where the letters are stashed within it. Juan Lobo sends a man to retrieve them—fast, as the fire is by now already consuming the roof of that building.
The man is not long about it, panting on his return. He hands the packet of lett
ers to Juan Lobo, who cannot read and passes them to Dax, he of the half-burned face. Dax scans several of them and says they all mention twins named Blake and James and also their wives and children.
Ah, they have families, how excellent, Juan Lobo says, and smiles wide.
All the letters show the same addresses, Dax tells him. In Brownsville, Texas. Across the Bravo from Matamoros.
“Muy bien,” Lobo says. He gestures toward the ready horse and tells Bruno he can go.
Bruno struggles up onto the horse and takes up the reins. “Let’s go, John,” he says.
Before John Samuel can hup his horse forward Juan Lobo grabs him by the nightshirt and yanks him down and sends him sprawling onto his hands and knees. Bruno yells Noooo! as Lobo takes a machete from one of his men and steps over to John Samuel and with one swing beheads him. A thick jet of blood lays a bright red stripe six feet long on the cobbles as the head tumbles and stops with a wondering stare at nothing at all.
You gave your worrrrd! Bruno screeches.
Juan Lobo turns to Fat Pori and says, Count to five and if he’s still here shoot him.
Bruno heels the horse and gallops away.
Juan Lobo picks up the head and sets it on the rim of the fountain and transfers the lensless spectacles from his own face to the head’s. How’s that, patrón? he says. Can you see more clearly how things are, my brother?
He hid in the bush off the hacienda road and waited. And envisioned again and again the wanton slaughter. John Samuel’s severed head. Rogelio Méndez hacked to pieces. He wept. He was there for half an hour before Juan Lobo and three others rode past at a canter. It was another hour more before the others came by, riding at a trot, singing and laughing, most of them drunk. Trailed by three mule-driven wagons creaking under their loads of booty. Bruno would never know it but two days hence the larger band of bandits would encounter a company of Rurales who would kill every man of them and divide the loot among themselves.
When he got back to the charred and smoking compound, corpses were being carted to the Santa Rosalba graveyard. A crowd gathered around him and he was helped down from the horse. They brought him water and tended his wounds and an old woman kissed his hands and murmured a prayer to the Holy Mother. They told him John Samuel had been taken for burial in the village and begged his forgiveness for not waiting until the fire died out and then burying him in the casa grande graveyard. Bruno said it was all right. Then one among them, weeping, told him Lobo took the head with him in a sack. Bruno could think of nothing to say to that, did not know whether to nod or shake his head. They told him Lobo and three companions filled their saddlebags with all the money from one of the strongboxes and left the other two boxes to the gang. There was nothing else to tell him that he had not seen for himself.
Then someone asked, What will we do now, patrón?
Patrón. Bruno Tomás Wolfe y Blanco, battered, and feeling very old, held the word in his mind for a moment. He looked about at the wreckage of Buenaventura. And said, Recover, what else? Then collapsed into a feverish unconsciousness from which he would not fully recover for two weeks.
He would babble in his sleep, hallucinate, intermittently come half-awake and be given water and broth, more than once be thought to have died. And when he would at last regain his senses, among his first clear thoughts would be that he must send a telegram to his border kin to warn them of what was coming. Though by then it had already arrived.
When the end came it came fast. Madero’s forces took Ciudad Juárez on the tenth of May—one of the leaders of that major victory being a bandit-turned-revolutionary who called himself Pancho Villa. Then in quick order fell Durango, Hermosillo, Torreón, Saltillo, many smaller towns. As Emiliano Zapata and his Indians were taking Cuernavaca on the twenty-first of May, representatives of Díaz and Madero reached an accord on a peace pact in the desert outside of Juárez, signing the papers by the light of automobile headlamps. Among other provisions, the treaty called for Díaz’s resignation before the end of May. Three nights later—as the wind whipped stinging dust through the Mexico City streets and thunderheads were massing—Díaz sat before his drafted but yet unsigned letter of resignation. An ulcerated molar had been tormenting him for days and his jaw was now so swollen it was an effort even to speak. He could not believe only eight months had passed since international heads of state were lavishing him with gifts and admiration during Mexico’s commemorative centennial. The agony of yielding his presidency to that little lunatic dwarf, of surrendering to an army of ignorant peons, was hardly less than that of his jaw. Advisors had been coming and going all evening but Doña Carmen never left his side except when he conferred with Edward Little. Edward reported that all the arrangements had been made for his departure. You sign that damn thing and we get you to Veracruz and then you’re off to Europe and to hell with all this. Díaz said that nothing in his life had ever been harder than writing the resignation. Except signing it. Every time I pick up the pen to do it, he said, all I really want to do is ram it in Madero’s heart. You’d have to hunker way down to do that, Edward said—and Díaz laughed in spite of his pain. There was a rumor he would be resigning that very night, Edward told him, and the zócalo was packed with fools waiting to cheer the news. Díaz glanced at the door to be sure it was closed, then said, Well fuck them. For damn sure I won’t sign it tonight. And he didn’t. The zócalo multitude was by then chanting for his resignation and menacing the palace guards. Mounted police were sent out to disperse them, swinging clubs and trampling the fallen. The crowd fought back with stones and banner staves, but when they started pulling policemen off their mounts, the soldiers on the rooftops opened fire. And still the enraged mob fought on. At which point the looming storm at last detonated into thunderclaps and lightning bolts and loosed a torrent of slashing rain that sent the crowd running for cover off the open square, taking their dead and wounded with them. And the battle of the zócalo was done.
In the morning, Díaz resigned.
On the last day of May, Porfirio Díaz sails from Veracruz on the German ship Ypiranga, accompanied by his family—his wife and daughter and wastrel of a son, an army officer via nepotism alone—and a cadre of guards under the command of Juan Sotero Wolfe. Juan Sotero’s wife and two sons, baby Carlos Sebastián only two months old, will remain in Mexico City until his return on some uncertain date that will prove to be more than four years hence. Díaz has appointed Edward Little to attend to a few details that will keep him in the capital perhaps another week. After which, Edward means to return to Patria Chica for good. In his valediction to a group of reporters on the dock, Díaz says of Madero, He has let the tiger out of its cage, now let’s see him tame it. He weeps when he and Edward hug hard at the foot of the gangplank. Two old men, friends of fifty years. It isn’t death that defeats us, he whispers in Edward’s ear, it’s fucking old age! He wipes his tears and says, Come see me in Paris. We’ll find another Lagrimas and dance with the girls all night. Edward tells him to plan on it.
Then the Man of Stone is gone. He will travel throughout Europe and be royally received wherever he goes, then settle in Paris, the Champs Élysées evermore reminding him of the Avenida Reforma. On the second day of July of 1915, lying on silk sheets and listening to a raspy phonograph recording of ranchero music, he will remember the Mexico City night when he and Lalo, already old, were on their way to Las Lagrimas de Nuestras Madres and with their cane swords fought off a gang of rateros. And have his last laugh.
Eight days after Díaz’s departure from Mexico, Edward Little, eighty-one years old and uneasy in his bones, wakes to darkness but needs no clock to know it is his hour of rising. He has never had much use for sleep and in the past forty years has rarely retired before midnight or failed to rise before dawn. More recently he has come to regard a night’s sleep with a vague dread, as the surrender of one more of his remaining days, and so he has been waking earlier still. As if even in sleep he senses the waning of time and cannot abide being unconscious in
its passing.
Madero is to arrive in the capital today but Edward plans to be gone by then. Yet there is time enough to indulge, in the single instance of his life, a brief lingering in bed. He will miss this city, though he knows he will be missing a place that no longer exists, that has already become someplace other. A truth of our lives, he thinks. All the places we have loved in the past have become someplace other. There is no place to go back to, not for any man. Nothing endures but the beauty of the natural world, and so he will retire to the beauty surrounding Patria Chica. It is a wonder the place was spared. So many rebel gangs in the region and yet none attacked it. No need after all to have sent the children to the border. But you make a decision and live with its consequences. Eduardo Luis dead. Sandra Rosario vanished. But Catalina alive—and what was of greater import? When he gets to Patria Chica he will send for her, first thing.
As he starts to get up he feels the bed quiver queerly. And then the entire house shudders violently and there is a great shattering downpour of glass in every room. The bed tilts and he falls back onto it. The house begins convulsing. The walls shedding scales of plaster, breaking open, falling. Ceiling beams cracking and buckling, sections of roof crashing down. There is a great groan from the earth below and the entire house sways and he is flung to the floor from which he cannot rise for the antic undulations of it. And then the floor itself gives way and he plunges into the roaring black maw of the rent world. And the ruins of his Mexican home follow after and bury him.
It is the worst earthquake in the capital since Mexico’s independence, lasting nearly fifteen minutes and killing several hundred and reducing much of the city to rubble. And still, only hours later, Francisco Madero enters the capital at the head of a long parade of blaring bands and rowdy celebrants. Bands blare and the crowds lining the broken streets weep and cheer in the joy of their deliverance, crying Viva Madero! again and again. Viva Madero! Whom a cabal of army generals led by Victoriano Huerta will assassinate in February of 1913. The ensuing civil war will be the most protracted and most savage in the country’s bloody history—and the onlooking nations of the civilized world will be appalled by Mexico’s brute regression from the pinnacle of the Porfiriato.
