El Paso: A Novel (59 page)

“These priests feed off of you like lice!” he shouted. “You go into church dressed in rags every day to be confronted with the stinking collection boxes at every door saying, ‘Alms for the dead!’ For prayers for the dead—bullshit!” Villa repeated. “Do you think you can buy the souls out of purgatory? Do you believe you can buy any prayers for the dead that will do the dead any good? It all goes to these stinking people who call themselves priests. And now they whip you because they say you are Jews. Are you?”

One man who was struggling to stand up under the weight of his crucifix answered. His face was flushed from the beating, and sweat poured from his brow, so that he had to keep blinking his eyes to see.

“They say so, señor.”

“And do you do these rituals on Fridays?”

“We always have, señor,” the man replied. “But we go to church, too.”

Villa was now in a white-hot rage. He turned on the priest. “I ought to take this man’s whip and flog you to shreds!” he screamed. “Now get out of here, before I do it!” The priest hurried off and went out of sight behind a building.

“And when I am finished with you,” Villa said to the bullwhip man, “you won’t be doing any more whipping!” He addressed the soldiers, who flung the man to the ground and began pulling off his boots. Next it was El Padrino’s turn.

“As for you, señor, you have held your last fiesta.” He motioned for his men to grab El Padrino. “Get a rope!” Villa bellowed.

“Please, señor,” El Padrino cried, “do not hang me!”

“Hang you? Why not?” Villa said indignantly. “Why, you’ve given me an idea!” The men in El Padrino’s party were on their feet with dismayed looks and the women began to moan and wail.

“Over here!” Villa ordered. The soldiers shoved El Padrino through the crowd of peons to the boardwalk in front of the cantina. “Tie his hands! Rope his feet!” the general cried. While his men were carrying out these orders, Villa spoke to the soldiers who had the bullwhip man on the ground. He was thrashing and squealing as they sliced the skin off of his bared feet with sharp knives.

“Now run him through the fields!” Villa told them. The soldiers hauled the man to his feet and one of them kicked him in the ass. Then they began merrily chasing him, shooting at the ground beneath his bloody feet with their pistols so that when he ran he left his bloody footprints in the street.

Now roped per instructions, El Padrino watched all of this in terror.

“No, please! I will give you money,” El Padrino begged.

“Up there!” Villa barked. He pointed to one of the beams supporting the second-story balcony above the boardwalk that served as a reviewing stand for the whores who were watching the fiesta. It was directly above the enormous iron cooking pot of boiling grease that the old woman had been frying her tortillas in. The men tossed up the rope, looping it over the beam.

“Hoist him up,” Villa ordered.

The soldiers pulled until El Padrino was hanging upside down, kicking.

“Now, you miserable scum, you will find out what revolution is all about!” Villa hollered. “In front of God and everybody else, do you give all your lands to these people?”

“Señor . . . please . . .” El Padrino whined.

“Do you!” Villa was almost beside himself.

“
Sí.
”

“Even if they are Jews?”

“
Sí
. . . please, señor . . .”

“Good,” Villa proclaimed. “And all of you heard this, right?”

There was a murmur from the crowd.

“Now put him in it,” Villa exclaimed to the soldiers holding the end of the rope. They began dropping El Padrino down toward the smoking, seething cauldron of grease.

“No! No!” El Padrino pleaded.

Reed, Bierce, and Strucker remained, watching the spectacle. El Padrino suddenly reminded Reed of an unwilling participant in one of Houdini’s magic acts, but none of them, not even Bierce, actually expected Villa to go through with it.

When the soldiers lowered El Padrino kicking and screaming, his head disappeared into the vat of grease. He writhed for a few moments and then became still. The members of his family in the grandstand were paralyzed with horror. When Villa was satisfied that El Padrino was well done, he nodded for them to raise the rope, and what emerged was a hideous sight. El Padrino’s skin had become translucent and almost glowing, like a wax dummy in a department store window. His eyeballs had been burned out; on his face was an abominable grimace and his tongue was gray and shriveled.

Reed had watched the village children standing mute and wide-eyed. He thought it odd when they didn’t scream or otherwise react, until he decided they’d probably been subjected to such brutality all their lives. Bierce was standing next to him, biting his lip, but managed to say, “Don’t look so sick, Mr. Reed, I’m sure your General Villa means well.”

Both Reed and Bierce thought at almost exactly the same moment how pitilessly, how savagely, this violence could come, even while they stood there watching. It was shocking, the macabre display of revolutionary politics. Each had different views of the overall philosophy, but it was nevertheless shocking.

“Tie him off,” Villa roared, intending to let El Padrino hang there as an instructive lesson in revolutionary zeal. He turned to the crucifix men, who remained standing in the street, agog.

“Why don’t you throw down those crosses and join my army!” Villa told them. “When we’re finished with our business, you can come home and work your own lands.” Some of the men began unburdening themselves of the crucifixes. Villa addressed the crowd again.

“Well, go on with your fiesta!” he shouted. “Let’s have some music.” The mariachi band began to play erratically and the people came slowly to life with a low collective murmur. The dancing women began to dance again under Villa’s watchful eye, and the children went to the little food stands to get treats. Villa had been holding his pistol in his hand the entire time and he finally holstered it.

“I’ve got a headache,” he said to nobody in particular, and went into the cantina to get a peachade.

SIXTY-ONE

C
rosswinds Charlie Blake was making good time until his horse, running fast, caught its foot between two sharp narrow rocks. When it pulled out the whole hoof came off, leaving only a bloody stump. It was a completely freak accident that, surprisingly, didn’t throw Charlie, but the shocked horse lurched and then tried to hobble on three legs. Charlie got down and surveyed the situation. The horse was standing with its mangled left rear leg cocked up so as not to touch the ground. Of all times, this would have to be his luck. Charlie took out his pistol, put it behind the horse’s ear, and pulled the trigger. The horse recoiled, sank to its knees, and rolled over. Charlie shook his head sadly. Now he was in a fine fix.

He had ridden all day across the valley and over a mountain pass toward where the El Paso railroad ought to have been. He knew roughly which way the railroad tracks ran and if he kept on going, he couldn’t help but run into them. But now, afoot, it would take longer. He was pretty certain the tracks weren’t far off, but when he looked into the distance he could see no signs. He left the horse, saddle and all, except for the saddlebags, and started walking, with the sun low behind him. He walked all night, but still no rail tracks. In the morning, as the sun came up, he spied a clump of adobe houses out in the middle of nowhere, not a tree or shrub around them.

When he got there he discovered that the houses were empty but not abandoned. There was a pot of beans still warm on the fire in one of them, and Charlie helped himself. Then he sat down in the doorway and scratched his head. Was he sure he was going in the right direction? The sun came up in the east and the rail tracks at this point ought to run north and south. He was headed into the sun, but no tracks were in sight. He calculated he must have gone at least thirty miles before the horse broke down. He picked up his bags and moved out.

He’d only gone a few miles when to his amazement he came upon the railroad tracks. They were low behind a big rise in the ground, which was why he couldn’t see the telegraph poles. Charlie sat down and waited. The trains ran along this route three or four times a day, and he didn’t have to wait long. He felt the train before he saw it, a kind of thin tremor in the steel track he was sitting on. Next he heard a whistle, and then he saw smoke and the train came rolling into sight around a bend. Charlie stood in the middle of the tracks and began waving the saddlebags over his head to hail the train. Trains often stopped for people out in the plains like that, but this one didn’t, and he had to jump out of the way to keep from getting run over. As it went past, the engineer shouted something at him in Mexican that sounded like an oath. Fortunately, it was a long train and not making much time, and Charlie was barely able to grab an iron rung of a ladder on a boxcar in the rear and hoist himself aboard. He climbed to the top of the car and sat down. Screw ’em, he thought, at least I won’t have to pay for no ticket.

XENIA HAD BEEN BESIDE HERSELF IN EL PASO
through all the long days and nights since she and Beatie had escaped from Valle del Sol. When they finally healed up enough from the car crash to take the train back across the border, they were greeted with letters both from Arthur and his father telling them they’d gone after Pancho Villa and not to worry, they would bring the children home.

Not to worry? It was one of the craziest notions Xenia could imagine—a couple of Bostonians going after a cold-blooded murderer who ran a Mexican army. She and Beatie remained at the Toltec Hotel, trying to pick up any tidbit through the newspapers or on the streets as to Villa’s whereabouts, but they got no further than the general speculation he was in the mountains and would come out when he was good and ready. There was no word from the rescue expedition, so Xenia didn’t even know if the children were dead or alive—or, for that matter, her husband and her father-in-law.

Xenia had gotten to know both General Pershing and his aide, Lieutenant George Patton, who were also staying at the Toltec and were entirely sympathetic with her plight after the Hearst papers inconsiderately broke the story that Villa had kidnapped her children.

“I’d like to go down there and put a bullet through his thick head,” Patton said of Villa. “These Mexicans are treating us with about as much respect as you’d show to a cockroach, and right now there’s nothing we can do but take it.”

“Well, George, I expect he’ll make a mistake one of these days,” Pershing said, “and then maybe you’ll get your chance.” Pershing seemed comfortable around Patton—more so than with his senior staff. One reason was that after the deaths of Pershing’s wife and children in a fire, Patton introduced the general to his sister and they had started up an intense and romantic exchange of letters.

“He’s already made his mistake,” Xenia snapped, “by kidnapping my family. A man will not be forgiven for that, by God or anybody else.”

“I believe you may be right,” Pershing told her. “Whatever sympathy there was for Villa in the United States has certainly evaporated since these stories began being published.”

That conversation had taken place several weeks earlier. Then, four days ago, Xenia had received wonderful news.

Patton had gone to the movie theater where they were playing the new Ben Turpin film. Before the main feature they showed the latest Black’s Movie News of the World that contained the footage of Pancho Villa. It had the shots of Villa preparing to attack at Chihuahua, Villa leading his troops at daylight, his defeat there, the retreat, and finally the footage the movie men had filmed in the mountains before they departed. Villa was quoted in the subtitles saying that he was not washed up yet and would return with an even larger army to defeat his enemies. The film showed Tom Mix doing horse and rope tricks, and then for a few moments the camera panned in on a lovely blond girl who Patton believed might be the age of Katherine Shaughnessy, and moments later a boy about the age of Timmy. He returned to the hotel immediately to get Xenia.

He escorted her to the cinema, where both of them tried to persuade the projectionist to rerun the Black’s Movie News of the World clip, but he spoke no English. Exasperated, they waited in a restaurant until the Ben Turpin film was over and returned to seat themselves in the theater for the Black’s newsreel. Xenia was almost beside herself as the film rolled on. In the moment after Tom finished his rope tricks, Xenia’s left hand flew to her throat and her right grabbed Patton’s arm so hard that he nearly jumped out of his seat.

“It’s them!” Xenia cried, pointing at the screen.

“You’re sure.”

“Of course. My children! They’re alive.”

“I thought it would be them,” Patton said.

Other spectators in the theater turned around in their seats, and several of them said, “Shussssh.” Patton growled at them.

By now the newsreel had moved on to Reed’s interview with Villa.

“Can they show it again?” Xenia asked fervidly.

“If they won’t, I’ll have my men confiscate the film,” Patton told her. They went to see the theater manager, who agreed that after the show they could come back and he’d run the newsreel again for them. He had the projectionist show the part with the kids a dozen times and ran the whole reel over again until they were satisfied there was no more information to be gleaned. All the newsreel said was that Villa had taken to the sierras, “where,” he was quoted as saying, “I will live off roots, if necessary.”