Dr. Brinkley's Tower (35 page)

Shortly afterwards, Corazón de la Fuente was visited with another debasement, this one in the form of a harelipped gringo businessmen who, one wretched morning, crossed over the bridge between nations. Accompanying him were an old donkey and a cart so teetering with firearms that pistols and handguns kept falling into the street and accidentally discharging, in one case wounding a woman hanging laundry to dry. While in peaceful times the gun peddler would have been told he was unwelcome and forcefully removed from the village, on this day he was surrounded by mercenaries and homeowners alike. They stood side by side around his cart, looking at Colts and derringers and even a few requisitioned Lugers, ignoring the fact that they would likely be using the weapons on each other. Included amongst that day's customers was the cantina owner; as he looked into the man's arctic-grey eyes, he suffered the chilling, and most likely accurate, sensation that this hombre represented the heart and the soul of all wars everywhere. Beset with this impression, he yearned to take the sidearm he'd just selected and dispatch the salesman to whatever death pit he'd crawled from in the first place. Instead he counted off a roll of pesos and grumbled his thanks.

Time lurched. It seemed as though the whole town was in mourning. Women who had lost husbands during the revolution once again donned the black dresses of grieving widows. At midday, those obliged to walk through the streets of the town reported the eerie feeling that unseen eyes were watching them, peering diabolically from cracks and fissures in the adobe. At night the village somehow seemed darker, the blackness of the skies overwhelming the frog-green corona produced by the tower's colossal signal. Everything became
dulled, as if coated in a depressive moss. The town's blue and pink adobe walls seemed muted in hue, and vultures could be seen circling languorously overhead, as though awaiting a bonanza. Rumours arose that translucent presences had been spotted rising from the graves of the municipal cemetery, an apparent attempt to flee to other eternal resting places; even the spirits of the dead, it seemed, could not bear to watch the ruination of Corazón de la Fuente.

On one such day, the sky was overcast with rainclouds that would no doubt hover, produce not a single drop of moisture, and then dissipate into finely spun wisps. Ramón and a few of his thugs, insane with boredom, entered the town's only saloon. Without so much as a nod towards the proprietor, they sat around one of the bigger tables and pounded their fists. The cantina owner brought them a round of cervezas. They drank these within minutes and again thumped the butts of their hands against the table. The cantina owner gritted his teeth and brought another round. The White Shirts consumed these as well, and then started barking for tequila, or mescal, or whisky — anything that offered a little kick. Suffering particularly acute visions of the night when the Villista captain had put a gun to his head and set his bar on fire, Carlos swept up every remaining bottle from behind the bar and impudently carried them over. He roughly dropped them to the table's knotty surface and said
Knock yourselves out, primos.
The cantina owner then went back to his seat in front of the cracked mirror, where he watched and seethed and nervously wound the tips of his gargantuan moustache, all the while thinking
Not again, you cabrones, you pendejos, you hijos de putas. Not again.

The White Shirts drank until the only ones not lolling in their seats were a pair of scoundrels who had lost consciousness and were sleeping with the sides of their faces in pools of condensation. The floor was graced by puddles of partly digested stew, the pissoir tacked to the wall ran with a foul, bubbly release, and the air inside the cantina was acrid with expelled, mescal-soaked breath. It was at this point that Carlos Hernandez emerged from behind his bar, walked up to the White Shirts, and pounded the tabletop so hard that a pair of bottles fell to the floor and broke with a crash.

— That's it. You've drunk me dry. No more. I'm finished. The cantina's closed forever. I have
had
it.

Ramón, one of the few men in the cantina sober enough to understand the impudence of the cantina owner's statement, took out his pistol and shot into the ceiling and the floor. He was about to shoot the cantina owner when Carlos, eyes blazing, hands shaking with adrenalin, produced his newly purchased Smith & Wesson. He then joined in Ramón's shooting, whooping like a desperado, firing so wantonly at the walls and floors and ceiling that by the time he was finished his cantina was little more than a splintered accumulation of sawdust, spilled liquid, and smoke. The cantina owner stood panting in the middle of the ruin. Plaster dust adhered to the perspiration coating his skin, causing him to look like a wide-eyed ghost.

— That was the most fun I've had in years, he said as he reloaded his pistol. — Now get out, you filthy, grunting pigs. Your smell is making me ill.

Rightly concluding that the cantina owner had lost his senses, those White Shirts still graced with consciousness
rose wobbling to their feet. They then backed out with their hands held skyward, even the most insensate among them noticing that the cantina owner was grinning like a rested house cat.

Now that this sort of insolence existed in Corazón, Ramón and his White Shirts reduced the number of their patrols. Instead they spent their time brooding in their encampment behind Madam's bordello, feeling resentful that they were forced to serve in a town with neither a cantina nor a place to buy even the most basic of supplies. The Marias began giving Ramón's men the most hostile of looks every time they went inside the house to demand a quick pleasuring; they had begun to feel that dealing with the White Shirts was more onerous than dealing with the town's resentfulness. Thus came the day in which Madam, regretting the frenzy she'd let loose upon the town, called Ramón into her office. A pile of gringo dollars, held together with elastic bands, rested on her desktop.

— Enough, she told him. — You've done enough. Here's your last pay, along with a healthy bonus.

Ramón walked up, took the money, and rapidly counted it, looking neither pleased nor disappointed. He then looked at her and winked.

— I got a better idea, he said. — How's about we leave when
we
think the job is done.

He left her office and exited the brothel. — Cabrones! he barked. — Full company, report. Now.

The men all groaned, rose from their bedrolls, tied on their holsters, attached spurs to their boots, and wrapped
themselves in the bandoliers worn by soldiers, bandits, and revolutionaries alike. They all mounted horses that, like their owners, had grown lethargic and grumpy with age. The animals expressed their displeasure by whinnying and attempting to bite their riders on the calf. In return they were spurred and smacked hard on the flank and whipped on the rump and in this way were reminded who was boss. Someone opened the gate, and Ramón's White Shirts clopped onto Avenida Cinco de Mayo.

As the White Shirts lazily rode towards the centre of town, the gringos lining up for the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures all sensed trouble and scattered. As always, Ramón and his men rode slowly around the plaza, one of them exhaling deeply and grumbling
Ay, qué feo es éste pueblito.
Mostly, however, they were quiet. The sun felt hot on their necks and coat sleeves. The sky was a bleached, cloudless blue. Above them an eagle floated lazily, hunting for mice. There were nine men slowly riding that day, and in their heads ran nine different thoughts — money, food, the past, the future, women they had known, sons and daughters who had gone off to live in los Estados, how nice it would be to leave Corazón, how nice it would be to have a cool bath, how a cerveza might go down well about now. They all grew hot and restless. Two of them even fell into that place halfway between sleep and wakefulness, where the muscles lose their tension and thoughts turn illogical. The only sound was the gentle, rhythmic clop of hooves on packed road dust … that is, until gunshot ricocheted through the plaza, and the head of one of the company members, an older hombre named Pedro, erupted in a funnel of pink.

They heard a second report, and then a White Shirt named Alfredo was holding his upper arm and yelling
I've been hit, I've been hit
and the company charged towards the shelter offered by a laneway, where they all drew their pistols and fired madly in the direction from which the bullets had come. This lasted for minutes and minutes. When they finally stopped shooting, the town smelled of gunpowder and the air was clogged with risen dust and the only sound was the groaning of a few innocent transients who had been shot while attempting to flee for safety. The White Shirts all listened for movement; upon hearing nothing they charged back to the corral. There they regrouped. Alfredo, who had suffered a flesh wound only, had his bullet dug out with the heated blade of a camping knife, his only anesthesia a wad of denim clamped between his teeth. When the ordeal was over, he muttered
Gracias, amigos
, slumped to the earth, and succumbed to the fever that would kill him a few days later.

To the backdrop of the downed man's delirious groaning, Ramón paced back and forth, his half-arm flopping. His eyes blazed scarlet, a consequence of rage and of having spent the entire afternoon smoking pipefuls of confiscated marihuana. That afternoon played out with nauseating familiarity for those who remembered the revolution. The remaining White Shirts, invigorated by their own interpretation of justice and morality, went from door to door searching for sympathizers. At each house they bullied and interrogated and frightened and spat accusations and struck hombres in the solar plexus with the butts of their rifles and conducted full-body searches on any woman not hiding in the desert.

Dusk came that night with flies and the rotting of flesh. Ramón and his desperados retired to their encampment. This time, Madam was waiting for them outside her place of business, her expression one of abject disgust.

— Ramón! she spat.

The surviving White Shirts stopped.

— I've asked you to leave already and this time I mean it! All of you. Pack your things and get out of my sight.

Ramón dismounted. He approached and slowly circled her, his shuffling steps raising dust. From the back of the house, the assembled Marias could hear the spurs on his boots clink. He finally stopped, regarded Madam, and spat onto the ground.

— You ain't getting this, he said. — There's an insurrectionary presence out there. Probably some old Villistas who heard we're still in business. Come to town to make themselves known — just the sorta thing those damn communists would do.

— I don't care. You work for me. Or you did. I've paid you enough. I paid you enough a long time ago. Now leave.

This time, to further communicate her request, Madam unclasped the handbag she was carrying. She reached inside, extracted the small pearl-handled revolver that she used in moments of emergency, and trained it between Ramón's beady reddened eyes.

— Whatta you gonna do? he challenged. — Shoot us all?

— That would not be possible, said Madam. — But I know you'd be a dead man.

— I would? Well, lemme remind you of something. Anything happens to me and a hell's gonna rain down on your sluts the likes of which they ain't never seen.

He then nodded at one of his goons, who was upon Madam in a second. A shot whistled through the air, and then two more of Ramón's men beset Madam, who screamed and yelled and attempted to kick her assailants in the shins. In response, the biggest of the thugs slapped her hard across the face, a stinging, welt-inspiring attack that converted her screams to soprano whimpers. She was then dragged through the back door of the House of Gentlemanly Pleasures, where the goons stopped at a closet filled with brooms, cleaning fluids, and the sadomasochistic toys used by Maria de la Noche.
Please
, Madam begged, her words falling on ears deafened by years of gunplay. They opened the door, shoved her inside, and turned the key protruding from the lock. The Marias could hear her pleading and pounding against the door, a sound that converted them into a group of cowering schoolgirls.

Ramón walked past them, pleased with the way in which his lackeys had defused the situation. He turned to the Marias.

— Now, all you whores. Get outside and stay there. It ain't safe for us to camp out there in full view. From now on, we live in here and you do all a your fucking outside, you understand? It's the war all over again, ladies. You should feel lucky we're here to protect you against them godless commies.

With that, the Marias were given a few minutes to collect their things and head to the White Shirts' filthy encampment. That night, word spread on both sides of the river that the famed Marias, owing to some skirmish in Corazón, were now plying their trade from pup tents smelling of sweat, old socks, and seminal emissions. It was news that spurred all but the most faithful of their customers to decamp for bordellos in Sabinas or Piedras Negras.

Ramón and his men spent the early part of the next day indoors, drinking fine amber cognac that, once upon a time, Madam had served to the hacendero Antonio Garcia. As the morning wore on they grew indignant, their instinct for self-preservation overwhelmed by boredom and alcohol-fuelled bravado. Ramón's men soon started insisting that they rush out and start firing, overwhelming their foes with a combination of surprise and ruthlessness. Ramón thought about this and agreed, his one condition being that they wait until nightfall, when the cover of darkness would also be theirs.

Time slowed. Trigger fingers grew itchy and muscles twitched. By half past two Ramon and his wild dogs could stand it no longer. They ran whooping into the street, forgetting that nightfall and the element of surprise were to have been the cornerstones of their strategy. Firing at everything that moved, they made their way to the central plaza, where shots rained upon them from a rooftop at the southeast corner of the square.