by David Xavier
“I should have put the pitchfork away,” the stableboy said. “At least out of reach.”
“And what did you see this afternoon?” Esparza said.
“I saw the firing squad shoot a man.”
“What man?”
The stableboy looked at the Capitán as if he was stupid. “The famous bandit from Alta California.”
Esparza came forward and clutched the table with both hands. “Tell me the truth.”
The boy stood. “I saw them shoot Salomon Pico.”
When the guards took the boy away, it was in a fit of screaming and clawing the walls. “Toss him in the snakepit anyway,” Esparza had said.
Fabian de Avila had not seen the fight in the stables, but he had been sitting next to Vicente in the mess hall when Ramiro called him out.
“He questioned Vicente’s manhood for turning Salomon in,” Fabian said. “Then he said something about his mother.”
“So Vicente wanted Ramiro dead,” Esparza said, turning to speak to his own reflection in the window.
“It was a fight,” Fabian said. “There have been fights before.”
Esparza blinked and leaned close to the window, wiping his sleeve across it once. In the courtyard the two cloaked villagers were pushing the body wrapped in white linens in a wheelbarrow. They hit a bump and circled the body, looking around and trying to lift the wheelbarrow upright again. Esparza turned away, his face flushed.
Fabian sat back. “The only time I saw Vicente and Ramiro within a shouting distance of each other after that was this afternoon. When we were all in the yard watching Ramiro stand in front of the firing squad.”
Everyone squinted against the sun and the bright walls, the chalky dust that fell from the concrete and made the ground as bright as midday clouds, so that the body tied to the stake was a wavy drawing on a blank piece of paper, something that hurt the eyes but everyone looked at anyway, a solar eclipse. Even the firing squad had trouble looking down their riflebarrels to sight in.
“I was not looking at Ramiro Morelos,” Esparza said. “I was looking at Salomon Pico.”
Fabian shrugged. “We were all looking at the same man.”
“Were you on jail watch?”
“You know that I was.”
They held Salomon for two days in the presidio jail while Capitán Esparza assembled a firing squad of villagers from Loreto farms by promising to pay them immediately upon pulling the trigger, including the pig farmer’s oldest son who had never before fired a weapon but had once tried to gut Colonel Castro in the cantina. The presidio soldiers would not do it. The San Javier policia, the same officers assembled for Salomon’s capture, would not do it. “I have heard that this man cannot be killed,” one of them had said and spooked them all, “and I want no part of this.”
Esparza continued his questions. “And both days you did not see Vicente approach the jail cell?”
“I don’t know about both days,” Fabian said, “but on my watch no, he did not.”
“What about his mother?”
“What about her?”
Esparza dropped his head and exhaled. He brought it back up. “What about Marisela? Salomon’s wife. Did she approach the jail?”
Fabian looked away. “No,” he said.
“That’s a lie.” Esparza pounded the table.
“Of course she did. She is his wife. In fact she was his only visitor.”
“And what went on during her visits?”
“They were on opposite sides of the jail bars. What do you think went on? They held hands and spoke to each other.”
“What did they say?”
“I gave them their privacy.”
It made Esparza turn and put his hands to head like he was pulling hair out, but Fabian had given them their privacy, dragging his chair to the corner of the room where he sat facing the window at an angle, with the jail cell in his peripheral. At that distance he could not hear the words of their whispers, but he did see, as much as one can see from the corner of an eye, that nothing exchanged between the two except tearful kisses. But when Marisela dried her face, the tears did not come again.
Salomon told her if he could do it again they would ride together and count the falling stars as the earth rotated beneath them. He would take them until the paths ran off the land and smudged away beneath the sea. He would take them far away, to a land unconnected to any other, where waves lapped all around on shores men could not travel to unless by boat, over a sea so long any stories of the past would be dissolved in waves of seasalt. A place where men had no memory, only an anticipation of the days ahead.
“How much time did they have together?”
“Time?”
“Damnit, how long were their visits?”
“No more than ten minutes a day. You gave that order.”
“And who supervised this?”
“You know who supervised it,” Fabian said. “Major Ortivez supervised it.”
Major Ortivez answered Esparza’s first question – What do you know of what happened this afternoon in the courtyard? – with one of his own.
“May I have a glass of water?”
“No.”
“It has been especially hot this afternoon.”
“I have no water. There is no water.”
“Then I have no answers.”
Esparza looked to the guards. “Get him a glass of water.”
When Major Ortivez set the empty glass aside, he still seemed to know nothing.
“Of course I supervised. How much supervision does a man in a cell take?”
He had escorted Marisela, Salomon’s only visitor, and when she entered the room her hands were empty but for a rosary. No more than ten minutes, the Capitán’s orders. Ortivez stood outside the door and kept the time on the same pocketwatch he had received from the Mexican Army for meritorious service. Ortivez held it up for Esparza to see, a very accurate watch. Esparza waved it away. When Marisela’s ten minutes were up Ortivez had only to knock. When Marisela left, her hands were still empty. Except for the rosary.
“And Fabian de Avila was in the room with them the entire time?”
“He was there, yes. He had his chair near the window.”
Esparza was leaning against the far wall. “What has Vicente’s disposition been like these last two days?”
“He had just made his mother very unhappy,” Ortivez said. “I would be sullen too.”
“He had just turned in the most wanted man in California, received a rich reward, and was up for promotion. In that position I would be happy.”
“You must not love your mother.”
“I love her enough.”
It was true that Vicente was sullen instead of happy, ashamed not proud. Capitán Esparza had given him a reward of a hundred reales, not as much as the Americans in Alta California were offering, but then again, Salomon Pico was not a name people had heard south of San Diego. Seven hundred miles south in the leafy jungles of Baja California, before arresting the man during the cantina celebration, Capitán Esparza had to research the name and crimes, a job that took several weeks waiting for the Mexican Army messenger to return with an official report along with old newspaper clippings of the bandit, which almost made Esparza fall out of his chair when he read, and still, a hundred reales is what the reward was, the same as it was for any small-time bandit stealing hens through a hole.
Regardless of the amount, it was a reward and achievement most law officers would have walked into a hornet’s nest of bandits or a republic of screaming rebels for, especially after months of standing at rigid attention with only their eyes following left and right while Capitán Feliciano de Ruiz Esparza, cleanser of La Frontera, paced back and forth spouting memorized lines of an officer’s duty to uphold the law in all shapes and forms, drilling into their minds the obligation and supreme honor of the job they were privileged to observe. After a few weeks Vicente could recite the words on his lips as Esparza said them.
But it was not th
e envious looks from the policia that Vicente felt on him as he backed into the shadows a richer man. It was the disappointed eyes of the presidio soldiers he avoided. That horrible look from his mother he shrank from. Vicente did not even count the money. He found an empty room where he could slam the door so hard the candle in the corner blew out and the crucifixes in every room jumped off the walls together. He spun toward the wall where the reward, the hundred reales, exploded like confetti. He fell to his knees and pounded his fists on his legs. Only after cursing aloud, screams that made the lizards on the jungle leaves scurry into hiding, did he realize the room was not empty.
Florita Elena, a soldier’s wife, sat praying in the corner by candlelight. Capitán Esparza questioned her too, looking much shorter in the same chair than the soldiers did. She told him she knew it was Vicente, the boy who wanted so much to be a man, who slammed her door two nights ago.
“I knew it the moment he came in. He has a smell to him, the way small boys have milk on their breath. I used to cook his meal separate in the kitchen because he liked his chicken a certain way.”
“What? He is six or seventeen years old.”
“Of course, he is too old to spoil that way. He is not a boy, not really.”
“What did he say to you?” Esparza said.
“Marisela would have scolded me if she knew I was spoiling him that way.”
“I don’t care about the way he likes his chicken. Did he say anything to you?”
Florita Elena looked up at the Capitán. She pulled her shawl tighter. “He apologized and relit my candle and told me to keep the scattered money on the floor.”
“He did not say anything about Salomon or Ramiro?”
“No. He is a polite boy. I am sorry I hit him.”
“When did you hit him?”
When Vicente first fell to his knees and screamed out his shame. Florita Elena knew it was Vicente because the candlelight stuck to him before it went out. And because he had that youthful smell to him. She came at him from the new darkness so quickly, covering him in slaps the same as his mother had done at Salomon’s arrest that he fell away and hid beneath his arms the way a child would curl into a ball.
But unless Vicente said something to this woman in the dark, something in the nature of redemption, all this was pointless for Capitán Esparza to hear. He opened the door and motioned to the woman to leave. As she moved through the door under his eyes Esparza said he wanted the hundred reales back. She turned to say something but he closed the door.
Esparza had spent two days ordering the policia to take up arms as a firing squad but they refused. He threatened a court martial, but they would not do it. “This man has the power of God behind him,” one of the policia said, and the others nodded. Two days of ignored orders, until Esparza left the presidio gates. It took only two hours to assemble a firing squad of villagers from Loreto, with the promise of prompt payment. More hands volunteered than Esparza needed, he only had six rifles, but he collected two more villagers who agreed would take the body of the executed away for burial.
Marisela had prayed for two days straight while her love sat in the drifting cell shadows for the firing squad to assemble outside. Two days her lips moved in silent prayer and her fingers kept track of the decades of the rosary. Two days, which is seven days less than she needed to finish a novena and wait for a miracle. During those days the time moved so slow, life within the presidio walls was so stalled, that one had to look carefully to see if it was moving at all, like a clock with no third hand to assure you the seconds are ticking away. People stood outside and did not speak. They just waited. Any words that were spoken were passed in far shadow or behind doors, and always in a low voice. Even the dogs that wandered the presidio dust avoided nosing the silent people for an absent-minded hand to crawl behind their ears. They found a cool corner and collapsed in a sigh and stayed there with their heads down, the dust lifting with each breath.
During those two days, when Marisela rotated the beads again and again, beginning a new rosary as soon as she spoke the amen to another one, Vicente visited her only once. Marisela pleaded with her son, admonished him, disowned him, then took him back in her arms all in the same minute.
“I saw him leave her room,” José Castro said, sitting in front of Esparza with a bottle of tequila. “He looked embarrassed when saw me. His mother must have been twice as embarrassed.” He took a drink. “But that is none of my bucking fizzness.”
“I can still smell the spent gunpowder outside,” Esparza said. “How did you get drunk so fast?”
“It is easy when you put your mind to it.”
“How has Salomon been these last days? Sick?”
Castro sat blinking at his bottle for a moment. “No.”
“Was he upset at all? Could he keep things down? Did he vomit or have to tear at his belt so he could squat over the bucket in the corner in time? Did he eat as usual?” Esparza leaned in. “Did he cry?”
Castro looked up.
“I mean he must have known he was not in any danger if he was not upset,” Esparza said.
Salomon had not seemed to move for two whole days, sitting in the corner with his knees up and his back to the bars. José Castro went in several times to lean against the jail and speak to him. Salomon showed no signs of sickness, in fact his mess bucket was dry when the presidio soldiers showed up to escort him that afternoon to the courtyard to stand in front of the six rifles.
“He must have known it would be Ramiro and not him.”
“We were not in on any plan,” Castro said. “We did as you ordered. You were there at the end.”
“I know I was, and I saw every one of you there.”
“You cannot point fault at us. You have quite a report to file with Comandante Carrillo. You sent Ramiro Morelos to death in broad daylight,” Castro laughed.
Esparza was at the jail cell in the final moment, along with the six presidio soldiers to escort Salomon to the stake. Major Ortivez and Colonel Castro put the cuffs on Salomon’s wrists and ankles while Ramiro Morelos and Vicente Valderez stood on opposite sides. Mateo Santos stood towering behind Salomon, and Fabian de Avila held the door. Esparza went with a blindfold instead of a full hood because the policia insisted this man could disappear before their very eyes. So he led him with an escort of six soldiers from the jail cell without a hood to be shot by six rifles in front of his own wife and a courtyard full of presidio soldiers.
“How barbaric,” Castro said, his laughter rising. “Not even a hood to hide his face.”
Esparza pounded both fists on the table but Castro burst into new hysterics, and Esparza pulled him from the chair and shoved him out, Castro plodding with resistant steps. The guards did the rest and Esparza slammed the door behind them, again knocking the crucifixes from the walls in each room. Castro’s laughter faded down the hall and Esparza stood alone for a moment, then overturned the table and kicked the chair to pieces. He reached for the door and called out.
“Bring me Vicente Valderez.”
Vicente had to stand. Esparza stood close to him.
“It is widely known that you and Ramiro hated each other. Everyone here knows that.”
“Yes. Ramiro was an ass.”
“Then it would not be difficult to blame you for his being shot in the courtyard.”
“I did not order the rifles to fire. I did not even pull a trigger.”
When the rifles went off that afternoon, Vicente Valderez stood behind the firing squad with the other soldiers, holding his mother in his arms.
“You were all there,” Esparza shouted. “I remember it.”
“Do you?”
Colonel Castro and Major Ortivez on one side, Fabian de Avila and Mateo Santos on the other.
“And you and your mother and…and Ramiro.”
“Impossible.”
“I saw him there.”
“You had him shot on the stake.”
“I will have you arrested for this. I will have you on
the stake in an hour.”
The rifles were so loud against the walls that it sounded like the wall had torn apart. When the smoke cleared away, Esparza almost expected the wall would not be there, that it had been blown away behind the body. He raised his hand to his eyes, the gunsmoke and sunlit walls bright enough to put black spots in any open eye. Crying followed the crash of rifles, and Esparza looked to the corner where a building came together in shade and a few soldiers’ wives stood with wailing infants in their arms. “Holy God,” Esparza had said in the gunsmoke, the sound of six rifles against a wall was enough to scare a grown man.
“But you did not react,” Esparza told Marisela in the same room. She stood with the broken chair and overturned table behind her. “You did not react at all.”
“I was behind you, you could not have seen my reaction.”
“You did not even blink an eye when I myself had to hold my ears to not go deaf.”
Marisela stood silent and did not move her eyes from the wall. Esparza put his face near hers. “I will see to it you get locked away forever for this. You will never see your son again.”
“It was you who ordered the shots fired.”
Esparza turned in curses and kicked at the chair pieces. He grabbed the chair by a leg and hurled it across the room, a broken spider of linked legs. He shouted, “And you will never see that Salomon Pico as long as I can help it.”
But Marisela smiled at the sound of his name, and Esparza’s tantrum was soundless to her, though he kicked and screamed away in the corner. The policia guards came through the door and approached Esparza, taking him screaming by the arms. The second-in-command stood in the doorway and ordered him detained.
“Until further notice, Capitán,” the young lieutenant said. “Until orders arrive from Comandante Carrillo.”
“I have done nothing here but my duty,” Esparza said.
“Until I receive orders, Capitán. Forgive me.”
Capitán Feliciano de Ruiz Esparza resisted the guards but was taken shouting from the door, leaving Marisela alone in the room facing the sunset in the window with a small smile on her face, looking like a nun who had just heard the voice she had searched for her entire life.
