The Hummingbird's Daughter (54 page)

Night.

A cool wind had finally sought out the prison, coming in from the sea with its smells of waves and fish, distance and salt. But she did not feel it, so hot was her fever. She slept on the floor, curled like a dog, the way she had slept a million years ago under Tía’s table. She shook with the heat of the fever, clutched herself. The floor rolled, heaved, a carpet on water, tossing in waves. She woke ten times a night. Awoke now, afraid. She pulled her feet closer to her body, as if something could grab them.

She pushed herself up, pressed her back into the stones.

“Quién es?” she rasped.

She pulled her torn skirts tight over her knees. She no longer smelled of roses—she had only the scent of meat and sweat, animal fear.

“Who’s there?”

A knot of deeper shadow stirred at the end of the cell.

She squinted in the dark.

“What do you want?” she whispered.

A sigh.

She pressed herself harder against the stones, but there was no place to go.

The shadow moved again.

“Am I dreaming?” she said.

It stretched, tall as a man. Then that shadow man stepped forward. A slant of moon coming through the slit window caught his face. He stared at her for a long while. Then he smiled.

“Cruz?” she gasped. “Cruz?”

He put his finger to his lips. Shook his head.

“What are you doing here?”

She rose to her knees, reached for him.

Vague smell of smoke.

He held out his hand, motioned for her to stay where she was. He shook his head. Then he put one finger near his eye. Tapped his eye.

Look.

Watch this.

She followed his stare, as he turned and looked at the far wall.

The stones there were flickering, as if candles had been lit in the cell.

“Cruz?” she repeated.

He pointed at the wall.

She watched.

The flickers expanded, grew long and bright. They burned blue, red, green, white. Brown. Yellow.

They formed and re-formed, knotting and furling. And, as if they were clouds creating images, the flickers quickly resolved themselves into a picture. It was a mountain valley. A river cut through the center, and small corn patches grew on one side, and across the river, a great cave. Then houses appeared. Then a church. She heard the bell ringing.

She knew this was Tomóchic.

Cruz and his warriors appeared, running with their weapons. The populace, small as ants, hurried about the village. Men clutched their hearts and heads and fell. Women and children and old men were hurried into the church. The big wooden doors closed.

She saw an image of a statue of her.

Fire appeared on the mountain peaks—gouts of flame and smoke.

The tiny houses before her exploded: fireballs bloomed where the houses had stood, and in the hearts of these little firestorms flew chairs and dogs, tables and babies.

She saw the Mexican army ringing the village, troops pouring down the peaks. Small cannons loaded with grapeshot. They fired, but all she could hear were low gasps. And the cannon shots dismembering Tigers—heads and arms flew from their bodies. The cannons shot balls, nails, coins. Walls flashed from white to red as men evaporated.

She saw Cruz and Rubén in the Chávez house—she knew it was the Chávez house. They fired through splintered windows, fired although they were wounded, starving.

Then the church was burning.

The army had set it aflame. The cries of the burning people within came to her as tiny as the cries of distant birds. Soldiers ran to the doors and broke them open, and Teresita thought they were showing mercy. But as the people ran out, some of them burning, some women carrying burning children in their arms and beginning to burn themselves, the Mexican army opened fire with Gatling guns. Their barrels spit and coughed and cut down wave after wave of people. The bodies squirmed under the impact of the rounds, falling and burning where they were hit.

And she saw that the soldiers had moved in behind Cruz and his men. They climbed the roof and poured burning pitch down the chimney hole. They were burning inside the house. Walls, window frames, doors bursting and splintering with withering fire; Cruz bloodied and shouting rose and fell in the broken windows, firing, firing, smoke curling from his hair.

And she saw the Mexicans send a man forth with a white flag.

He gestured at the burning house, was yelling something to Cruz and his defenders inside. The army ceased firing. Eerie silence of echoes and crackling flames. And the door opened—a billow of choking black smoke furled out. And there was Cruz himself, leaning on a friend’s shoulder. Wounded—terribly wounded. His leg was bent, and he had been shot in the side, in the back. A yellow-white finger of bone hung from the red hole in his thigh, splinters of bones like toothpicks stuck to the black clot of blood in his clothes.

The Tigers helped Cruz hobble forward.

The Mexican smiled at him. Took his hand. Offered Cruz a cigarette.

And when Cruz leaned forward to accept a light, a soldier stepped up behind him and shot him in the head.

“No!” she cried.

The lights faded.

Cruz turned to her.

“I am doomed.”

“I did this to you!” she cried.

“We did this to ourselves,” he replied. “We are doomed to our fates,” he said. “But your avengers are strong.”

“My avengers?”

“Your avengers gather in the hills.”

“Who?”

“They come,” he said. “They come. Everyone will die for you.”

“No! No!”

She watched blood spread across his face. Dark black blooms of blood sprouted on his shirt, soaked around his ribs, jetted from his leg.

The world was on fire.

She reached for him, Cruz Chávez, the only man who had ever pressed his face against her and listened to her heart.

“Be strong,” he said. “All is not lost. Adios.”

And he was gone.

Sixty

THE GUARDS MARCHED toward Teresita’s cell at dawn. The skinny kid who delivered her food had been found outside the prison with three arrows in his back. The attackers had also cut off his ears. No one had seen anything.

She awoke to the sound of the guardias’ boots echoing on the cobbles and between the stone walls. She sat up and listened to them come. They weren’t shuffling this time. They were marching. So this is my hour, she thought. Perhaps Cruz Chávez would greet her when the rope snapped her neck.

The thin blooms of crusted blood on her face she wiped away with spit on her fingers. She fixed her hair as best she could in the gloom. The boots approached. She wondered if she would be executed beside her father.

The boots stomped to a halt outside the door. Keys rattled. The lock snapped and the door creaked open on its rusty hinges. Three guards stepped inside and ordered her to turn her back. She put her hands behind her back and waited with her head down. They shackled her. She turned and looked at their faces. She saw that Pepe was not among them.

They gestured for her to step outside. She didn’t know how long it had been since she’d seen the sun, walked any distance at all. She stepped out into the brightness, holding her head high, blinking. Even among the fetid stables, the air was fresh and brisk. They grabbed her arms and led her out of the barnyard, away from the gallows.

So.

It was to be the wall.

“Where is Pepe?” she asked.

“I am here, girl,” he said.

He was behind her.

“Shoot well, muchachos,” she said. “Pepe, aim for my heart. But let my father go.”

“Shut up,” Pepe said. “Do you know your problem? You never learned to keep your mouth shut.”

“Aim for the heart.”

“I said shut up!”

She was marched briskly past the wall, and back down the long courtyard where she had entered the prison. Faces pressed to the bars in the windows again, but the prisoners said nothing. She twisted and looked over her shoulder.

They passed a stained, punctured adobe wall.

“Señores,” she said. “Isn’t that where the firing squad —”

“Quiet.”

At the far end, in painful light, she saw others gathered, and a black wagon pulled up and blocked off the opening. It was drawn by a large white horse.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Keep moving.”

The crowd was made up of soldiers, Rurales, police. They stared at her as she approached. All of them had heard of her, read the newspapers. They pressed in to get a look. Her guards pushed them aside and shoved her through the narrow gap in their hot bodies. To the back of the wagon. Where Tomás waited.

“Father!” she cried.

His left eye was blackened and swollen, and a slim crust of blood was stuck to his chin. He was filthy, his shirt half-untucked, and his hair stood straight up in the back. When she first saw him, he was slumped against the doors of the wagon, his eyes closed, and his face gray. He heard her voice and stood tall—taller than all the guards. He smiled.

“Teresita,” he called.

She rushed to him and laid her head against his chest.

He rubbed his chin on the top of her head.

“Did they hurt you?” he asked.

“No. I was spared.”

“You are thin,” he said.

“I have a little fever,” she replied.

She leaned back and peered up at his battered face.

“And you, Father? Have they hurt you?”

“I,” he said. Then, “I fell against a door, that’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

She stretched up and kissed his cheek.

“Liar,” she said.

“Back,” Pepe said, opening the doors of the wagon. He allowed them to put their hands in front, then he relocked their shackles. He grabbed their elbows and roughly helped them climb the metal step. Once they were seated inside, he slammed the doors and locked them.

“Where are we going?” Tomás demanded, but no one answered him.

The whip cracked. The horse lurched forward. They fell against each other and struggled to stay upright as the wagon wobbled away from the prison.

“Are you afraid?” he asked.

“I am.”

“Me too.”

“Oh, Father.”

“Is dying bad?”

“Not as bad as you think.”

“But the bullets,” he said.

She shook.

“That frightens me,” she said.

“Well, girl, at least bullets are fast.”

The wagon rattled and banged over the cobbles in the street. Mounted soldiers spread out before and behind it. Guaymas was quiet that morning—the sea breeze that they had been denied in the prison blew down the alleys, carrying with it the smell of salt. Teresita pressed her face to the bars to smell it until a tomato hit the side of the wagon and sprayed her cheek with juice.

People along the way peered in at her, whispered to her, hissed. “Witch,” one woman said. Men laughed. Two horsemen rode along beside the wagon, and they pushed people back with the toes of their boots.

“And so we die,” Tomás said.

From the street: “Viva la Santa de Cabora!” Followed by the sounds of a scuffle.

Teresita took his fingers in hers.

“Be brave,” he said.

“I will.”

They passed down an alley, broke out into a sunny boulevard.

“You say death is not so bad?” he asked.

“No, not so bad, Papá. Better than prison.”

He nodded.

She leaned her head against his shoulder.

“They might not shoot us,” he said. “They might hang us!” He had hoped to be more positive, but being executed was a terrible affront to him. He could not contain his outrage. These fools would forever think themselves his equals, or worse, his superiors. He wanted to kick somebody. “Cabrones!” he said.

“I have had bad dreams about the noose,” she whispered.

How could he comfort her?

“Oh,” he finally said, “the noose isn’t so bad. It breaks your neck if they do it right. You’ll probably never feel it.”

“Why, thank you, Father. That’s the best news any girl could ask for!”

They laughed, for neither of them would weep.

Teresita had never seen a train, but she knew what it was when she saw it. And in spite of the wagon and the chains and the blood-drooling bites on her face, her neck, the terrible burn and itch under her clothes, she was excited to see the great machine stretched out before the station like a grand serpent.

“Look, Father,” she said. “A train.”

“By God,” he said. “A train?”

Tomás was so tired, so very tired. He could barely keep his eyes open. But he raised his head—it could have weighed ten pounds—and smiled.

“Yes,” he said. They were going to be shot against the station walls. Witnesses had been brought in to watch. Reporters, no doubt. Military wives.

“We are, apparently, to be the great spectacle,” he said.

It was a steam locomotive, and it was attached to a long string of cars, and soldiers stood all along its serpentine length and squinted at their black wagon.

Tomás strained to keep his eyelids open, but his vision was blurred. His eyes felt as if they had sand in them. His wrists were black from the bruises, his fingers swollen and dark from the cuffs’ cruel bite.

The wagon jerked to a halt. They listened to the soldiers mumbling outside. It was already so hot in there they thought they wouldn’t be able to breathe. The guards left them locked inside for a half hour. When they finally unlocked the back doors and grabbed hold of Teresita, Tomás was asleep again, huddled on the bench like a dog. A soldier took hold of his ankles and hauled him out; his head smacked against the floor.

Tomás opened his eyes and said, “Watch out, pendejo.”

The soldier grabbed his collar and pitched him forward. Tomás went down chin first in the dirt.

Teresita said, “Stop it!”

The same soldier turned and spit at her.

“Or what?” he said. “Or what, witch?”

One of the others called out, “She’ll turn you into a lizard!”

“She’ll feed you to the Yaquis!”

They were laughing at her.

She helped her father to stand. He shook his head, shook the dirt out of his hair.

“Hey! Hey!” Pepe called. He hurried forward. “No need to hurt the prisoners,” he said.

“How do I look?” Tomás asked.

“Handsome,” Teresita replied.

They smiled at each other.

The train chuffed on the track nearest the station. Soldiers pushed against Teresita’s back with their rifles held before them, knocking her ahead as if she were a cow or a reluctant mule. She reached for her father’s hand, but they knocked her fingers away with a rifle butt. “Move,” Pepe said, and she moved. Her shackles clanked. She could smell herself, and she could smell her father. Dirty hair, sweat. She held up her head as she walked.

“Bastards,” Tomás muttered.

Pepe laughed.

“Where are we going?” Teresita asked.

“Judgment day,” he replied.

They crunched past the caboose. Soldiers stood on its back platform. Then two passenger cars. In the distance, the locomotive chugged like a vast heart. Its languid double-chuff blew vague steam into the air.
Cha-hump, cha-hump, cha-hump.
Most of the windows of the train cars filled with faces—women and children staring down at her. Atop these passenger cars, sandbag nests held soldiers with more rifles. They stepped up a small stairway onto the station’s platform, and they walked across it at eye level with the passengers, walked to the end of the platform, then down three steps to the slippery gravel along the track. Teresita lost her footing once—Tomás grabbed her with one hand, steadying her. The soldiers crunched behind them.

They walked past the passenger wagons, and came abreast of a flatcar. The car’s bed was lined with sandbags, and rifles bristled over their heads as the soldiers and guards watched for marauding Yaquis. In the middle of the car, a Gatling gun stood tall on its tripod. In front of the flatcar was another, abandoned passenger car with more soldiers on the roof. And ahead, between this car and the locomotive, yet another flatcar covered with soldiers.

“They expect a war,” Tomás said.

The head guard struck him between the shoulders with the butt of his rifle. Tomás fell forward against the side of the car.

“Shut up,” the guard said.

An officer stood alongside the empty passenger wagon. His back was to them. His uniform was crisp. His cap sat squarely on his head. He turned and stared at them.

“Enríquez!” Tomás shouted.

Pepe smacked him in the back of the head.

Enríquez turned to a soldier and borrowed his rifle. He stepped up to the leering Pepe and struck him in the forehead with the rifle butt. Pepe let out a startled bark and fell on his back in the dirt.

“Like a sack of beans!” Tomás enthused.

Pepe gargled and writhed.

Tomás turned to Teresita and said, “By God, it’s Major Enríquez!”

“A major no longer,” said Enríquez.

“Captain Enríquez?”

“Not quite.”

“What, then?”

“After our little visit at Cabora,” Enríquez said, “I am now a lieutenant again.”

He snapped his fingers, pointed at the manacles. A private with a ring of keys stepped over Pepe and unlocked Tomás and Teresita.

“Thank you, sir,” she said.

“At your service.”

He clicked his heels and gave her a slight bow. He gave Pepe a brisk kick. Pepe grunted and opened his eyes. Enríquez glared down at the prostrate guard and scolded him: “You are a soldier of the Mexican army. You will hereafter comport yourself with honor. We will observe protocol here.”

Teresita bent to Pepe and laid her palm upon the black mark spreading across his forehead. He blinked up at her in terror and scrambled away on his back. He got to his knees and scuffled off, his ass churning back and forth in its dirty khaki pants.

“Pig!” noted Tomás.

Among the lieutenant’s retinue was a boy of about twelve. He was dressed in a small uniform, his hat cocked crookedly on his head.

“Private García!” the lieutenant said.

The boy stepped forward and saluted.

“Sí, mi teniente!” he shouted.

“Private, see if you can bring the prisoners some water.”