The Friends of Pancho Villa

by James Carlos Blake

  Months later, somebody came along with a yellowed clipping from the El Paso Times and read it to a bunch of the boys. It was Calixto’s story, all right, except that his own name had been changed to Pedro and his friend’s name had also been altered, and the battlefield had been moved from Chihuahua to just north of Mexico City. Calixto was thrilled to have his story in print—even though he himself could not read it—but he was outraged by its inaccuracies. “I should go to El Paso and tell the chief of that damn newspaper what a rotten reporter this bastard is! What kind of ignorant son of a bitch thinks Chihuahua is twenty miles north of the capital! What kind of reporter lies about people’s names?” He was so angry he refused to tell reporters any more bullshit stories for almost a month.

  But the old gringo said he wasn’t here to write stories. He was all through writing stories. He said a writer’s life could be duller than death, and the combination of such a dull occupation and the undeniable advances of old age had become more than he could bear. He was here to join Villa.

  “I seek the rediscovery of adventure, my friends,” he said. “It has been too long since I last knew the excitement of imminent mortal threat.”

  Urbina snorted. “Another fucking gringo looking for thrills among the Mexicans. All these people think we’re just another one of their fucking moving picture shows. They all want to be in the show and pretend they’re Jesse James.”

  Urbina loved to tell about the time in Juárez he and a bunch of his boys went to one of the first moving picture shows in that town. The problems started at the ticket stand by the front door when Cholo Martinez insisted that he should only have to pay half price because he only had one eye. The ticket seller insisted just as adamantly that Cholo had to pay the same price as everybody else. Suppose everybody wore a patch over his eye to avoid paying full price and then took off the patch in the theatre and watched the moving pictures with both eyes? Then who would be cheating whom? “In that case,” Cholo said, “just make everybody with an eye patch show you what’s under it.” He pulled up his patch and thrust his raw and empty socket to within inches of the officious little man’s face. Urbina said that the fellow nearly threw up. He allowed Cholo to go in for half-price.

  Then the movie started and things got worse. The movie was about the famous gringo bandit Jesse James, and the moment the James Gang rode onto the screen, whooping and shooting, many of the spectators dove for cover under the benches. A moment later a posse of lawmen was in pursuit of the bandits across the white sheet tacked to the wall, and in the spirit of outlaw brotherhood somebody in the audience joined Jesse in shooting at them. In the next instant the whole movie house was engaged in a gunfight. More than a dozen men were killed, including the projectionist, who knocked the projector over as he fell dead—and who, as it turned out, was the only one in town who knew how to operate the machine. Thus, even after the smoke cleared and the dead and wounded were removed from the theater, the survivors were denied the satisfaction of seeing the remainder of the film. They would have shot the movie house manager in protest if he had not already been taken away with a bullet in the leg. “One thing about the moving picture shows,” Urbina would always say in the tone of a schoolteacher. “They are not an entertainment suitable for everyone. Only those with strong nerves should be permitted to look at them.”

  “What about your family, old one?” somebody asked the graybeard gringo. “Aren’t they worried about Grandpa coming to Mexico to be a revolutionary?” There were snickers all around, but the old man didn’t seem to mind.

  “I’ve said all my farewells,” he said. “Henceforth my future shall be decided by the fortunes of war.”

  We exchanged looks around the fire. The fortunes of war? Those were the words of a writer, all right—or of a goddamn stage actor—of anybody but a real person. Urbina was right: the Revolution was no different from a moving picture show to these people. They came to play a role in some picture show in their heads, just like in that movie Urbina had seen in Juárez. Christ! They were so full of self-deception, these gringos. They had such false illusions of the world and such heroic fantasies of themselves.

  Sitting cross-legged near the campfire, Urbina squirmed in irritation with the old fool. “So you’ve come to Mexico to find . . . what did you say . . . adventure?”

  “These are adventurous times in your country, my general,” the old man said.

  “And the risk of being killed?” Urbina said. “Does that not disturb you even a little?”

  ‘‘Better death by a bullet,’’ the old man said, “‘than to droop with decay until one falls like a withered flower drained of all color.”

  “Oh, I see,” Urbina said. “What you really want is to avoid the humiliations of old age. No pissing in the bed in the middle of the night, no spit hanging from your chin at the supper table, no sad memories of the last hard-on you ever had. I understand.” His voice had an edge. The old goat had really nettled him.

  The gringo was startled by Urbina’s tone. He seemed unsure what to say.

  “I’ll tell you what else I understand, you damn scarecrow,” Tomás said. “You’re ready to die, all right, but you’re too damn much of a coward to just go off in the desert and do it. You want somebody to pull the trigger on you. That’s why you’re here.”

  Now the old gringo tried to look offended, but the truth of Urbina’s words was in his eyes. “You misjudge me, my friend,” he said stiffly. “I’m here to fight for General Villa. Yes, I meant what I said about yearning for the excitement of my soldiering youth, but more important than my yearning is the cause of your revolution. Liberty is imagination’s most prized possession, and my imagination bows to no man’s.”

  “Bullshit!” Urbina said. “You want to die, old man. You have the look, you have the smell. But you won’t be satisfied to just die—no, you’ve got to die like a hero in a song or a poem. You want to get it on the battlefield from a Mexican bullet. Well, to hell with you! Why should any Mexican do the job for you? We’re not your goddamn servants. Go home, you cowardly old bastard! Go home and die in the stink of your oldness!”

  Tomás had worked himself into a genuine rage. He tried to get up, but the rheumatism had him tight in its jaws, and he grunted and sat back down hard. His face gleamed with the sweat of his pain.

  “You do me an injustice, sir,” the old gringo said. ‘‘I am no coward.”

  “What?” Urbina said. “What?”

  “I resent your accusation, sir. I am not rushing to that house of indifference we call the tomb, although I assure you I have no fear of—”

  “Oh goddamn it, here!” Urbina yanked out his pistol and shot the old man squarely through the forehead before he even had a chance to look surprised.

  “Fucking gringos!” Tomás said. “They always have to have their way, always.”

  •

  When Villa got back the next morning and learned that Tomás had killed an American, he was not pleased. He figured that if the old man was really as well known as he claimed to be, the gringo newspapers would probably make a big story of his death and the American government might decide to crack down on our weapons suppliers north of the border. He gave the matter a moment’s thought, then ordered Tomás to get rid of the body far out in the desert. “Tell your boys to bury him deep and be sure to leave no sign of a grave.”

  And that’s what Tomás did.

  SIX

  One I didn’t shoot but should have was the Scotsman, William Benton. Our troubles with him came shortly after we set up a military government in Chihuahua State. Villa had put some of our boys on police duty in the state capital and assigned others to operate the city’s basic services—the streetcars and waterworks and electric plant, the flour mills and slaughterhouses and so on. He also prohibited confiscation of private property anywhere in the state except on his signed authorization. All in all, we’d made life a hell of a lot better for the peop
le of ­Chihuahua—except of course the rich ones.

  The Scotsman owned a ranch called Los Remedios, 150,000 acres near Santa Isabel. The local population knew him as el inglés turbulento—the Anglo of the terrible temper. When he came barging into our Juárez headquarters one day, complaining that our boys had been cutting his fences and stealing cows from his herds, Villa could at first only stare at him in wonder: the old fellow’s Spanish sounded like a barrel of frogs. “What the hell kind of accent is that?” Pancho finally said.

  “German!” Urbina shouted, glassy-eyed with tequila. “This is an old growling German tiger we got here!”

  “I’m a Scot, you ignorant half-castes!” Benton thundered, looking straight at Villa—and I knew right then and there he was also a dead man. But he bulled right ahead, either blind or indifferent to the sudden storm on Villa’s face: “I’ve lived in this rock pile of a country for thirty years—thirty years!—and I’ve never seen—never, I say!—a worse plague of brigands than you and your band of riffraff. Well, I want this bloody thievery stopped, you hear? I don’t mean please and I don’t mean maybe, and I want it stopped today.” His accent ripped the air like a wood saw.

  Villa’s eyes were red slits. I could almost hear that “half-castes” rolling around in his brain like a bullet. I don’t know if the old guy was brave or just stupid, talking to Villa like that, jabbing his finger at him, spraying spit on the table where Villa sat with his advisors, but now everybody was looking at Pancho to see what he would do.

  “Tell me, Señor Inglés,” Villa said softly, “how many of your cows did my men take from you?”

  “How many?” the old Scot repeated. “What bloody difference does that make? One thousand or one dozen, they’re my cows, and I won’t stand for losing even one more, do you hear? Not one more!”

  “You own more cows than my whole army could eat in a year,” Villa said, his voice rising. “But you lose a dozen of them and you feel cheated. You own more of Mexico’s land than most Mexicans will cross in a lifetime, but you are the victim and they are the thieves because they take a few cows from your herd. Tell me, Señor Inglés, with so damn many cows, how can you know when even one hundred are missing, much less one dozen?”

  Veins were bulging on the Scotsman’s forehead. He slammed a fist on the table and shouted, “Don’t you lecture me, Mr. Goddamn General! I’m telling you: keep your rabble off my land. I’ll shoot the next bloody beaner who so much as touches my fence!”

  He spun around and started for the door, but Villa snapped his fingers and several of the boys cut him off. Benton was fifty-three years old but he was no scarecrow: the boys had to work hard to get him under control. I thought it was funny, but Villa didn’t seem too amused by the spectacle of four Dorados wrestling themselves into a sweat against one old man. In the struggle, Benton’s pistol slipped out of its holster and fell on the floor. One of the boys handed it over to Villa.

  “You should not have drawn your gun on the governor of Chihuahua, señor,” Villa told Benton when the old Scot had at last been subdued and was held fast by a Dorado on each arm. “Trying to shoot the governor is not only bad manners, it is a capital offense.”

  The Scotsman was out of breath but even more furious than before. “Governor! A brute like you couldn’t govern a proper whorehouse! And you can shove your ‘capital offense’ up your thieving arse!”

  “I have heard more eloquent last words,” Villa said. Then: “Fierro!”

  “Chief.” I stepped forward.

  “The legal government of the state of Chihuahua has found this son of a bitch Inglés guilty of attempting to assassinate the legal governor. The sentence is death. Do it.”

  “Done, my chief,” I said.

  As we led Benton away, he put his hands to his mouth and nose and imitated the piercing notes of a bagpipe. I bit my lip to keep from laughing out loud. Urbina later told me Villa’s face had been something to see.

  We put the Scotsman on a horse and headed south into the desert. Daylight faded as we rode. The moon, fat and silver, hung low over the mountains, and the air smelled of sage and warm stone. A coyote called in the distance. The dying of day was always my favorite time. I felt the country’s beauty like a caress.

  Benton said nothing during the ride. Maybe he was recalling things: his last fine meal . . . the prettiest breasts he’d ever kissed . . . his unspent money in the bank. Rich son of a bitch. He could consider himself lucky: a lot of men went to their graves with nothing to remember but whores, beans, and hangovers. But who knows? Maybe all he was thinking about was the feel of the horse under him. I didn’t ask.

  The boys took turns helping him dig up the hard ground just under the top layer of sand. The moon was higher now and the wind had kicked up and turned cold. One of the boys offered Benton some tobacco and paper to make himself a smoke, but he shook his head and took a pipe and tin from his jacket. When he saw me grinning at the tremor in his hands as he tried to pack the bowl, he snarled and flung the pipe away and jammed his hands in his pockets. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes off his grave.

  The boy digging looked up at him and laughed. “Hey, Señor Inglés,” he said, “you don’t feel like making no catfight music now, eh?”

  The coyotes howled in the foothills. The Scotsman glanced out there, then said to the boys with the shovels, “Make it deep, damn you. I don’t want those beasts digging me up and dragging me all over this miserable countryside.”

  I generally made it a point not to talk to a man once the process of his execution was under way: the fun was mostly in his fear, and I didn’t like to distract him from it. But the Scotsman’s remark caught me off guard—and without thinking, I said, “If you think this country’s so miserable, you Anglo cocksucker, why have you been here the last thirty years?”

  He turned to me and said, “Why?”—and in that instant his eyes got steadier than they’d been since we’d arrived at his grave site. I damned my big mouth and drew my pistol to remind him of his circumstance, but it was too late: I’d given him a chance to focus on something other than his fear of the grave and he wasn’t about to let it pass by.

  “Sweet Jesus, man,” he said, “I’ve stayed in this pest hole strictly for the goods, why else? You ignorant half-breeds are too damned stupid to get the riches for yourselves. Any white man of average wit can make a fortune here—while you donkeys do all the work! Why, you’re like monkeys living in a gold mine. You simply do not have the capacity to—”

  His skull shattered under my pistol barrel. He hit the ground dead. I stood over him and cursed myself under my breath. I didn’t like to lose my temper that way in front of the boys—it went against my reputation as unflappable. I turned to them with a hearty chuckle and said, “The old fool wasn’t worth wasting a bullet on.” I made a dismissive gesture, and they rolled him into the grave and covered him up.

  By the time we got back to Juárez, Villa’s spokesmen had put out the story that William Benton of Los Remedios had tried to assassinate General Francisco Villa, the provisional governor of Chihuahua, because of a misbegotten conviction that the general intended to confiscate portions of his land without just compensation. Señor Benton had been duly tried on the charge of attempted murder of a civil official. He had been found guilty, sentenced to death, and shot.

  In no time at all, the news of the Scotsman’s death was across the border and telegraphed over the Atlantic. Christ, what an outcry. You would have thought we’d killed the goddamn king of England. The news made outraged headlines from El Paso to New York to London. We heard it made the front pages in Paris.

  The British of course had a national fit. We should have expected it—they always did think their blood was more precious than Christ Almighty’s. They demanded that the U.S. take immediate steps to obtain the full details of Benton’s death and deal with his murderers if murder was proved. The Americans had this obligation, the
Brits said, because their Monroe Doctrine prohibited European intervention in Mexico.

  “Viva la Monroe Doctrine!” Urbina cheered, raising his glass in a mock toast. We didn’t see what the hell all the fuss was about. “A thousand Mexicans are shot every day,” Villa said to a group of gringo reporters, “for good reasons and bad ones, and that’s that. That’s life, no? But here one old Anglo goes to his grave and ay, Chihuahua! the sky is falling all over the world. What’s the matter? Don’t people die in Great Britain?”

  A gringo envoy in pinstripes came to talk to Villa. ‘‘You simply can’t order the death of a British subject without legally justifiable cause, General.”

  Pancho told him the cause had been plenty legal and justifiable: “The old bastard tried to shoot me!” he said with such hot indignation I almost felt it myself.

  The Yankee representative said he, personally, was certain that was exactly what had occurred, but unfortunately the British government was reluctant to accept our word for it. They were demanding documented proof that everything had happened just as we claimed.

  Villa said that was the trouble with the British: they were too suspicious of everybody. “How is the world ever to improve itself,” Pancho asked, “if people don’t start learning to trust each other?”