27
The barracks were just that. Long, empty hallway-like structures of cut linden, roofed with tin, and by the time I arrived the air was steeped in the smell of cologne and musk as the men excitedly talked among themselves about the pending fiesta.
Other men began to arrive and stable their horses and they ranged from musicians to businessmen to the young ranch hands Señor Guerrero permitted to attend. A group of fresh-faced young men passed by with their chins out and chests flared. They removed their hats and used the palms of their hands to slick down their hair before covering it again.
“It’s their clothes that gives them away,” a man named Averitt whispered to me. “It sure as hell ain’t their pride.”
The girls came down and each took two men about their arms and they led us back up the hill and to the courtyard, where we sat and were served a feast of goat and chicken and peppered peas. Tequila was poured and consumed and poured again and Jimmy made it a point to loudly announce his disdain for “Mexican bathwater,” and he drank only from the whiskey bottle he’d acquired in Perry Springs.
The sun began to set and the light turned red the sky and the paper lanterns marked the courtyard with the colors of a day made dusk and when the band played it was to the tune of celebration. The men drank away the massacre as I was sure they had done before. Some flirted and danced, but many simply drank and me among them.
Sophia’s fingertips found my arm briefly as she passed by and when she did not look back I followed her and we drifted to one of many fires and stood alongside the young vaqueros and their slicked hair.
“You see now,” she said, looking into the fire.
Her hair was pinned back with colorful birds, and obsidian earrings shone black against her skin. She wore a long black skirt and a ruffled white blouse. When the soft gusts of the coming winter wind crossed through the courtyard, her well-ridden boots emerged from the flowing skirt and she was both the symbol and reality of beautiful strength.
“I do,” I told her.
“Will you stay?”
“No.”
“When will you go?” she asked.
“When you come with me.”
She did not answer for a long time and instead we stood and listened to the boys goad and harass one another about sexual things they knew nothing of but hoped to someday.
“You must go to the mountains and wait for the snow,” she said.
“What? No. I’m getting out of here, tonight. You coming with me?”
“We’ll be caught.”
“No we won’t.”
“And then you’ll get killed.”
“Not if we don’t get caught. Listen, Grimes has done promised you to that old man. They’re gonna make you stay here and be part of his little harem—do God knows what.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Do you think it will be easier to slip away from a band of outlaws or one old man?”
I sighed.
“Alright,” I said.
She looked around.
“You must go with the Lobos. Go to the village in the mountains. Let time pass. When the first snows come, we will meet in the hills above Perry Springs.”
“How will I find you?”
“When the time comes,” she said, ignoring my question, “tell them you are a hunter.”
Then she turned and was gone and the vaqueros laughed and maybe it was at me.
From the darkness of the yard I watched Mr. Guerrero sit his wheelchair under the porch lanterns. Men approached to pay their respects, and after a handshake and a few short words the bull of a woman from earlier chased them off with a glare. She stood like a twisted guardian angel behind his chair, scowling at the festivities until Grimes came and slipped a hand across her lower back and whispered into her ear and upon hearing his words her face turned to a mock and playful horror and then she giggled as she perhaps had as a young girl and Grimes smiled and took the handles of the wheelchair and leaned down to talk to the old man as he pushed him toward a group of men in fine suits and expensive boots.
* * *
I had never before tried tobacco, but that night I smoked. A young vaquero offered out a sack, and from it I pinched what I believed was a healthy amount between my thumb and fingers and, using my body to shield the wind, I sprinkled it into paper and rolled.
The young doctor passed by and I offered a seat, which he took. I also offered a share of my smoke, which he declined, but in good time he produced his own cigarette and we sat, the two of us, and watched the flickering lights and the burning wood and the music drifted across the yard and out into the places unseen and carried with it fragrance of a regret not yet known.
“You don’t like it here,” he said and was not asking.
I did not speak.
“I don’t like it here,” he continued. “I believe, or I did, in the cause. I believed in Grimes’s words.”
“And his actions?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“They are . . . murderous.”
“And yet you stay.”
“And yet I stay.”
For a time we did not speak and when that time came to an end, the young doctor tossed the last of his paper into the fire.
“It is murderous men who shape empires. Alexander, Caesar, George Washington, even Lincoln had to be willing to spill the blood of a nation so it might heal stronger. But Grimes is not well, it’s true. He is a sick man and his sickness lies in the mind. For this I have no procedure. There is no bone to set nor wound to tend. I am afraid his wound, whatever it may be, was suffered long ago and cannot be so easily mended.”
I nodded.
“Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe it ain’t no wound a’tall. Maybe some men just choose to be how they are and that’s the way of it.”
“Maybe,” the doctor conceded. “But that has not been my experience. I believe even the most evil man could have been good, had things only turned more in his favor.”
I thought of my brother.
“In any case,” he continued, “I came here to save lives, not take them.”
He paused and pulled from his pocket another cigarette.
“I could have practiced medicine anywhere, you see. I came here and I did not like what I saw, nor do I like what I see now: the killing, the kidnapping.”
He emancipated a charred stick from the fire and used its glowing end to light his smoke before condemning it again and watching for a while as it was consumed by the flame.
“Let me ask you, Doc. What happened to the girl’s mother?”
“It’s difficult to explain.”
“Try.”
“Señor Guerrero did not approve of his daughter’s choice of husband. Some Mexican gambler from a border town down south.” The man pulled on his cigarette. “So, as sort of an insurance policy on their arrangement, he let Grimes have her.”
“Guerrero is Sophia’s grandfather?”
The doctor nodded.
“Anyway, for some reason—maybe the daily dose of laudanum he gave her—the woman fell in love with Grimes. Problem was, Grimes never cared about the woman in the first place. His eyes were on her daughter the whole time.”
“Sophia?”
“That’s right. So one day the woman takes a mysterious fever, not like anything I’ve ever seen. The next day she’s dead. Of course, now he has to wait for the old man to die too. No way is Guerrero going to let Grimes marry Sophia. He’d send an army stop him.”
“But he’s leaving her here. Why would he do that?” I asked.
“He knows the old man will protect her. Being his blood and all. Then, once he dies, or maybe once Grimes gets his little mountain utopia set up, Grimes will come back for her.”
We both paused to ponder the strange ways in which the world turns.
“There is a man I knew from my school days,” the doctor said at last. “He is a Texas Ranger. I have his address in San Antonio.”
I stopped him there.
“Sounds like one hell of a mutiny of the open seas,” I said, raising my brow.
“Can I count on you, Caleb, when the time comes?”
“I don’t know what you’ve got planned, and to be honest, I don’t give two shits.”
“If you love the girl, this is the only way to be with her.”
“You got some sand even telling me all this,” I snapped, “and it damn well better not end up getting me killed. Now get the hell away from here and don’t ever speak to me again.”
“Well then,” he said, rising and flustered. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“I think it’s best you do.”
“I hope I can at least count on your discretion in this matter,” he said in a hushed tone.
“Go on, Doc,” I told him and looked back to the fire.