Last Train from Cuernavaca (13 page)

When the women gathered in the courtyard Sunday morning, Grace wore the dress she had bought the day before. It was the latest fashion and looser and shorter than what she was used to. Even with lisle stockings and a long duster coat, she felt a draft on her ankles.

Rafaela and the other young women had dressed in white with bright shawls around their shoulders and high tortoiseshell combs in their hair. Each had sleeked back her glossy black mane and pinned it in a knot at the base of her neck. As they gathered in the courtyard they reminded Grace of a flock of swans.

The capital's main plaza was not like most in Mexico. Although the cathedral fronted one side and a large fountain spouted water in the middle, it was not graced with trees, benches, or a bandstand. White-gloved policemen directed traffic that formed massive snarls in spite of their shrill whistles and energetic efforts.

The Mendoza family occupied two of the cathedral's hundreds of pews. Grace had not ever spent much time in church. She closed her eyes and let the music and the Latin liturgy wash over her.

After the service, Grace and the Mendozas joined the hundreds of other worshipers fanning out across the plaza. Grace noticed the company of soldiers crossing the plaza toward the National Palace, but she thought nothing of it.

The soldiers had hardly disappeared inside when the shooting started. One volley originated at the National Palace, but other shots came from the far side of the plaza. Caught in the crossfire, people screamed and ran. Someone knocked Grace sprawling, but he probably saved her life. He hadn't gone far when machine-gun fire mowed him down.

The smallest of the Mendoza children stood crying in the middle of it all. Grace scooped him up and ran to the fountain in the center of the plaza. Shielding him, she crouched against the fountain's concrete side and peered over it, looking for the sources of the gunfire.

At first she thought the rebels had managed to bring their fight into the capital itself. Then she saw that the combatants all wore the uniform of the Federal Army. It made no sense to her, but she hadn't time to ponder politics.

Once she saw which streets gunfire wasn't coming from, she picked up the boy and raced for the nearest one. Just as she reached it, stray bullets hit the corner of the building close by, showering her with debris. She kept running, turning down one street then another until the crackling sound of the battle faded. She collapsed on a bench in a little park and realized she was lost. When she'd caught her breath, she took the child's hand and set off walking, asking directions as she went.

An hour later Grace and the boy made it to the Mendoza's neighborhood. The last few blocks to their front gate were the most dangerous. She was back in the heart of the city, and bullets were flying from all directions. Grace had lived through one revolution. She knew what heavy artillery sounded like. Someone had brought in a big gun. When it went off she pulled the child into a doorway.

While the howitzer was being reloaded, she sprinted along the front wall of the Mendoza's house, already pitted with bullet holes. Grace pounded on the door and shouted. After what seemed half an eternity Calisto let her in.

Everyone had thought the child was dead and the women screamed with joy. The rest of the family had made it home safely. The men dragged all the mattresses into the center of the house as a defense against stray bullets. Grace helped them build ramparts of them, but she had little faith that they would stop cannonballs or artillery shells.

The men gathered what few weapons they had—one musket, two rifles, three pistols of varying vintage, and a dozen machetes. All night the family huddled together, women and children in the center, while sporadic shooting continued. Grace thought the battle would stop the next morning, but it didn't. By midday the faint odor of decay drifted over the wall.

The adults held a conference and decided to flee to the hacienda of relatives in Xalpa, seven miles southeast of town. When night came they began loading the women and sleepy children into the Minerva. The Nike only had two seats, so one of the men rode as guard next to the driver.

By tripling up, the Minerva could accommodate all the women and children, but with no room for personal belongings. The men would return for Calisto and those who remained.

Rafaela beckoned to Grace to get into the car.

“I'll come later.”

Rafaela tried to reason with her, but Grace kept shaking her head. She knew that as soon as Rico heard about the fighting he would come for her. When he did, she would be here. Still, fear sent a chill through her when the two cars drove away.

Just after sunrise, Rico did arrive. He was hollow-eyed and unshaven. He had a long, bloody wound on his cheek, and a bullet hole in the upper sleeve of his uniform jacket. Grace started to sob and he put his arms around her.

The introductions were brief. No one asked for an explanation of Rico's connection with Grace. They had more important questions.

“What's happening?” asked Calisto.

“Porfirio Díaz's cousin Felíz and about fifteen hundred followers have taken over the armory. Madero has put Huerta in charge of defeating them.”

“Huerta?” Grace blurted out. “He's counting on General Huerta?”

Rico's glance let her know he had the same misgivings.

No one had to ask why Felíz Díaz had assembled an army. They all assumed he intended to take the country back for his cousin Porfirio.

Rico continued. “The insurgents have freed two thousand criminals from Belen prison. And a lot of electrical wires are down.”

As if on cue, the lights went out. Calisto lit candles and oil lamps.

“What about Cuernavaca?” asked Grace.

“As far as I know, the trouble hasn't spread outside the capital.”

They heard engines and Calisto opened the gate to let in the Nike and the Minerva.

He turned to Grace and Rico. “Come with us.”

“I have to return to Tres Marías,” said Rico. “A train will leave the capital tomorrow with troops to protect Cuernavaca.”

“And I have to go home,” said Grace.

“God go with you then.”

As the men distributed themselves in the two cars, Calisto took Rico aside and gave him something. He embraced Grace, shook Rico's hand, and made the sign of the cross over all of them. He slid into the passenger seat of the roadster and rested the butt of his Mauser on his thigh.

Grace knew that “Be careful,” was a stupid thing to say, but she said it anyway.

Calisto smiled. “No man dies before his time.” He waved and the little caravan pulled out.

Rico closed the gates after them and shot the big iron bolt home.

They went into the house. Rico lifted the straps of his canvas satchel over his head and gave it to Grace.

“I thought you might be hungry,
querida.
I brought some tamales from Tres Marías.” To head off the question she was bound to ask, he added, “They do not contain iguana meat.”

He stretched out in a big overstuffed arm chair while Grace dampened a rag and cleaned the blood from his cheek.

“Did you take the train here?” she asked.

“I walked.”

“It's more than thirty miles over that terrible cobblestone road.”

“No one wanted to risk bringing the train in today.” He pulled her onto his lap, put his arms around her waist, and kissed her. “I couldn't bring Grullo into the city to be killed by a stray bullet from one of those Judases.”

“What about your family?”

“I don't know.”

“You should find them.”

“My grandfather doesn't need my help. I would rather be with you here, now, than anywhere else.”

“What did Calisto say to you just before he left?”

“Nothing, my love.”

“Tell me, Federico.”

Rico sighed. When she called him Federico she expected answers.

“He gave me this.” Rico held up a small pistol. “And these.” He opened his palm to show her a pair of 32-caliber bullets.

She stared at the pistol. “That won't stop anyone.”

“It's deadly at very close range.”

The silence lengthened as Grace realized that the bullets were for her and Rico, should insurgents or marauders get inside the house

“I see.”

“Don't worry,
mi cielo.
It won't come to that.”

Grace could tell that exhaustion was about to overcome him.

Before he drifted off he mumbled, “They're calling it the ‘fiesta of bullets.'”

“Who is calling it that?”

But he had already fallen asleep in her arms.

Maintaining two personas, one male and one female, required planning. No one who had known Angel as a scabby-kneed hoyden would have described her as a planner, yet she had worked out the logistics of a double life.

Every so often she put on a flowered blouse and a long skirt with a flounce around the hem and went to Tres Marías. Her mission was to beguile information from the soldiers quartered there. She was good at it.

On her first foray she had met Berta, who sold tamarind candy to the soldiers and the passengers. Berta was seventeen. She was small, dark, and delicate, with a soft laugh. Angel trusted her with the secret of her real identity. Berta shared her candy so Angel could pose as one of the women who walked alongside the passenger cars, calling softly, “What will you take?”

Today, Angel had learned about the battles raging in the capital. Not even the soldiers at Tres Marías' barracks knew what to make of it, but they thought maybe the troops arriving on tomorrow's train could tell them more. Angel left with Berta to retrieve the trappings of her other life.

The folk of Berta's village had been relatively well off until nine years ago. When the local hacienda owner moved the boundary post for water rights, the communal irrigation ditches dried up. Local officials, even under Francisco Madero's post-Revolution government, continued to ignore pleas for justice. Angel found sympathy there.

For a silver ten-
centavo
piece the size of a shirt button, Berta's widowed mother let Angel leave her trousers, shirt, sombrero, saddle, and weapons in her one-room hut on the outskirts of the village. Angel's belongings took up more of the dirt-floor space in the tiny house than the family's did. Berta's younger brother pastured her mare, since a poor Indian woman riding such a fine animal would rouse suspicions among the soldiers of
el gobierno.

Whenever Angel returned from Tres Marías, Berta's mother insisted she share their evening meal. While Angel ate, the widow mended what ever rips had appeared in her clothes since the last visit. Berta had already reinforced the threadbare seat and knees of Angel's trousers with scraps of canvas. Like most of the Zapatistas, Angel called herself
guacho
, orphan. For her, these simple kindnesses were gifts beyond price.

As for the spying, Angel enjoyed fooling men into divulging information, but she preferred trousers to a skirt. She felt safer as a soldier than as a woman, and not because of the Winchester 30-30 slung across her back. As a soldier she faced threats from
federales
in battle. As a woman, men of both armies, and civilians, too, might menace her on any given day.

Angel had just changed into her shirt and trousers when she heard a stifled cry behind the house. She grabbed her carbine and ran outside, scattering the small flock of chickens scratching in the dust. She rounded the corner and saw that a man had pinned Berta against the back wall of the compound. He held one hand over her mouth and tore at her clothes with the other.

Angel could smell the rotten stench of
pulque
. She wasn't surprised to see that Berta's attacker was Ambrozio Nuñez. She was no stranger to coincidence where he was concerned. God must have a grudge against either Nuñez or her to keep inserting him into her life to plague her.

The thought also occurred to her that he had come here to cause trouble for her while her men weren't around. If that had been his plan, the lovely Berta had distracted him from it.

“Let her loose,
cabrón
.”

He gave her hardly a glance. “Go to the devil,
coño
.”

That he didn't seem surprised to see her made Angel think that neither God nor coincidence had anything to do with his presence here. His original plan might even have been to rape her.

Angel didn't consider him worth the waste of a cartridge. She grasped the carbine by the barrel and swung it with both hands. Ambrozio Nuñez was extraordinarily stupid as well as drunk, but even he must have expected her to attack. He dodged, but the walnut stock glanced off his skull with enough force to knock him out. He pitched backward onto the cone-shaped corncrib, crashing through its cornstalk and mud-plaster wall.

Angel dragged him out of the wreckage by his heels.

“Berta, help me carry him.”

Angel picked him up under his arms and Berta grabbed his ankles. They hauled him to the public fountain where Berta's mother and several other women were gossiping while they filled their water jars. Angel didn't have to say anything. Berta's torn clothes told the story.

Ambrozio was beginning to stir as Angel finished stripping off his clothes and shoes. She left him naked to the women's tender mercies. They went at him with what ever hard objects came to hand. The last she saw of him were his bare soles and blanched backside and women in noisy pursuit.

Angel retrieved her saddle and belongings from the house. On the way to the forest clearing to get her mare, she threw Ambrozio's flea-infested clothes into a ravine. She hummed “Valentina” as she rode away. She looked forward to sharing this story with her comrades. Then she would play cards for cartridges until nightfall when she had plans that included Antonio.

First she had news to deliver.

She called out greetings and traded insults as she rode among the men squatting in small groups around their cookfires. Colonel Contreras had found a good bivouack site for his hundred or so troops. This mountain glen wasn't far from Zapata's temporary headquarters in Ajusco. It was densely wooded and could be reached only by an easily guarded defile.

Contreras's men didn't even have to worry about the smoke from their fires, although they weren't in the habit of worrying anyway. Two companies of
federales
were garrisoned at Tres Marías, only enough to patrol the tracks. They didn't stray far into the countryside. Since Madero had called Huerta back to Mexico City, the rebels and the government troops had operated on an unspoken agreement. As long as Zapata's people left the train alone the
federales
didn't go looking for them.

Angel brought information that would change everything. As she approached the farm house where Contreras stayed, she rehearsed what she would say about the battle raging in Mexico City. The squabbles in the Capital meant nothing to her, but she understood that the consequences could affect them all.

Many of the men in Contreras's units neither knew nor cared who occupied the president's seat in Mexico City. They pinned their loyalty on General Zapata and Colonel Contreras, and trusted them to tell them whom to fight. Like the other local chiefs, Contreras led by consensus. He was also the one who gave Angel and the rest their
chivo,
their pay, although not much and not often.

To be honest, while Angel waited to see Contreras, she was thinking about how she would torment Antonio when she finished here. He fretted whenever she left to mingle with the
federales
soldiers. She planned to tease him about her flirtation with the soldier called Juan.

Antonio said he was worried that
el gobierno
would discover who she was and hang her, but he also suffered a chronic case of jealousy. She knew how to reassure him on that second concern.

Wherever Angel's band camped, she and Antonio looked for a place they could be alone. Here they had found the vine-covered ruin of a one-room stone cottage whose thatched roof had long since rotted away. It wasn't far from camp, but it had a reputation for an infestation of snakes so people avoided it. Angel and Antonio took stout sticks to beat the vines and walls thoroughly to evict the reptiles, scorpions, and spiders lurking there.

They had progressed well into the exploration phase of love. Angel shook her head in an attempt to stop thinking about the warm, hard contours of Antonio's bare body, and the feel of his strong, calloused hands stroking her.

Tonight might be their last chance for days to come to lay out their blankets and entwine among the vines. Government troop trains carried guns, ammunition, and food. Angel knew that when she told the colonel about the train leaving Mexico City tomorrow, he would decide to attack it.

No matter what the outcome, Angel and her people would have to go on the run again. She hoped they would be better armed and fed when they did.