5

The Old Man

Rico sat stiff as a ramrod on the front edge of a velvet sofa in one of the three overcrowded parlors of his family’s sprawling hacienda. He balanced his flat-topped, duck-brimmed officer’s hat on his knees and tried not to tug at the itch under his high collar. He was here to ask a favor of his grandfather, whom everyone called El Viejo, The Old Man, although not in his hearing.

As El Viejo waved his glass of cognac around and held forth from the depths of his favorite overstuffed wingback chair, he reminded Rico of a bulldog straining at his leash. Chronic choler and an abundance of alcohol had turned his cheeks and nose red. They made a startling contrast with his unruly shock of white hair. Rico wondered if this would be the day the Old Man gave himself apoplexy and died. He felt bad that he didn’t feel worse about the possibility.

The Old Man was why Rico rarely came home for visits. He wouldn’t have been here now if Juan hadn’t wagered a ridiculous sum of money that Rico’s grandfather’s big Andalusian stallion could outrun any horse put against him. Rico would have preferred to forfeit the bet rather than ask El Viejo for the loan of the horse, but Juan needed the money to pay off gambling debts.

Rico could have given Juan the money, but he knew from experience that was the fastest way to destroy a friendship. Rico and Juan were as different as beer and brandy. They had their disagreements, but they proved that while love may be blind, friendship closes its eyes.

Thanks to exiled president Porfirio Díaz’s policies of modernizing the country, los correctos, the upper crust, had a mania for all things European. Rico’s family was no exception. The musty smell of the horse hair stuffing in the sofas and chairs made Rico sneeze. The dusty, voluminous velvet drapes suffocated him. The hulking wardrobes, bureaus, and highboys, the curio cabinets, spindly French tables, and crystal chandeliers made him feel as though the walls were closing in on him.

His mother’s collection of several hundred porcelain shepherdesses and celluloid Kewpie dolls made him uneasy. As a child he had liked to stare at the bright blue walls until the pink rosebuds and gilt scrollwork painted on them began to move. He no longer found that entertaining.

His grandfather’s rantings were the worst. They were like a cylinder on one of those newfangled phonographs, playing the same song over and over. Maybe it was inspiration, maybe it was a hallucination of the sort a bad headache can cause, but suddenly the Old Man’s voice became no more noticeable than background noise.

Phonograph. In his trancelike state, Rico thought of a way to get la Inglesa’s attention. On his next assignment in the capital he would buy one of those newfangled phonographs for the Colonial. He imagined dancing with Grace Knight to the music. He even knew what music he would bring.

He almost smiled, but stopped himself in time. A smile would have alerted El Viejo to the fact that his grandson wasn’t listening.

The Old Man finished his praise of Porfirio Díaz and launched into his favorite subject—the ingratitude of los indios brutos in general and the most brutish of all the Indians, Emiliano Zapata.

“He demands that we hacendados pay him a tax to support his mob of bandits. And if we don’t, the dirty thieves will destroy our sugarcane crops and burn our estates. It’s extortion. They should all be hanged from a thorn tree while buzzards eat their eyes and entrails.” His anger propelled him out of the chair and set him to pacing. “General Huerta is right. Zapata and his rabble must be crushed like lice, and Rubio is the man for the job.”

Rico had heard the same crush-them-like-lice speech from Rubio himself the night he met la Inglesa. He didn’t bother to point out that Rubio would have a hard time persuading his men to turn on their own people. That would have made his grandfather angrier. Not making El Viejo angry was essential if Rico was to race the stallion. He had to get the horse or the afternoon would be a total waste of time, dignity, and forebearance.

Rico had heard his grandfather’s oration often enough to know that he was coming to the personal part of it.

“When will you find a woman to marry, Rico? When will you produce offspring?”

“I am looking for the right woman, Grandfather.”

“I know several young women who would marry you.”

“Don’t you mean you know several women who would marry me to get your money?”

“Don’t be insolent. By the time you finish with your gambling and whoring there won’t be any money left.”

Rico knew he only had to sit through an assessment of his lack of ambition, and then he and the horse could leave.

“Thanks be to God that you did not continue that ridiculous pursuit of a career in medicine. Otherwise, you would be smearing salve over the rash on some peasant’s buttocks and receiving chickens in payment. You should light a candle in gratitude that a word from your father into the ear of General Huerta obtained the position of Rubio’s aide. You will be able to make important connections with influential people in the Capital.”

The Old Man confirmed Rico’s suspicions. His family was at the bottom of his promotion. Merit had nothing to do with it.

“How many years are left in your enlistment?”

“Two, sir.”

“When your time is up you will take a law degree. Law and government service are where the power and prestige lie.”

And the bribes, Rico thought. In Mexico, justice was a commodity to be bought and sold like any other.

Rico could have recited what his grandfather would say next. He had to concentrate on not letting his lips form the words silently. That too would have propelled the Old Man to a higher level of righteous outrage.

“With your army connections you can get a good job,” El Viejo went on. “You’re white enough to be elected president one day.”

Rico coughed to keep from laughing. Laughing would never do.

 

When Rico finally stalked toward the front door he felt as though he were breaking out of prison. Or an insane asylum. He was too familiar with the ancient, elegant magnificence of his family’s home to be awed by it. Cortés had built it as one of many sugar plantations, or rather his thousands of indio slaves had. What ever one might say about Hernán Cortés, the man thought large.

The archways of the first floor corridors reached sixteen feet tall. The second and third floors had twelve-foot ceilings. Four hundred and eighty years of rain and wind had given the rough stucco walls the look of an Impressionist work of art. The goldfish in the fountains had grown to the size of Rico’s forearms. The sinuous vines embracing the walls had had time to approximate saplings. Always the hacienda’s background music was the grinding and clanking of the machinery in the sugar refinery behind the house.

Rico was headed for the stable when he encountered something that jolted him from his grandfather-induced brown study. Six men lounged under a huge tabachine tree. When they saw him they leaped up. They wore khaki uniforms with high, stiff collars. They hustled to form a line, as if preparing for inspection.

They looked somewhat like indios, with spiky black hair. They had the indios’ golden brown skin and almond-shaped eyes, but they certainly weren’t indios. They bowed. They bowed again. They were still bowing when Rico entered the redolent warmth of the stable. He waited a few heartbeats, then peeked out. They stood at attention as if waiting for his return.

The stableman was brushing the stallion, although his silver-gray coat already gleamed. Because of his color the Old Man had named him Grullo, Crane. Rico’s grandfather claimed he was a descendant of the Andalusians ridden by Cortés and his men. If a creature existed more beautiful than this original Spanish bloodline, Rico had yet to see it. Even the stallions of the breed were less high-strung and more manageable. Rico could not look at Grullo and stay angry.

“Good afternoon, Don Federico.”

“Good afternoon, Pablo.” Rico did not want to ask information from the help, but his curiosity got the better of him. “Who are those men?”

“Japanese.” Pablo had worked for the Martín family all his life. He knew that answer wasn’t good enough. He also knew the young patron would be too proud to ask for an explanation, so he provided it. “Your grandfather hired them to protect the hacienda. They finished fighting the Russians a few years ago. Their commander is some Frenchman.”

“The Russo-Japanese War.” Rico knew about that. The world had gasped in astonishment when the diminutive Japanese warriors whipped the Russians, Cossack cavalry and all. “It ended seven years ago, in 1905.”

Pablo grinned. “I suppose they missed fighting. So here they are.”

“Please saddle Grullo. He’s going with me.”

Japanese? Rico had never studied that language. How could he have been so negligent? He had a lot of questions he would like to ask them.

 

The racetrack was laid out on the level ground behind the enlisted men’s barracks near Cuernavaca’s train station. Not until Rico rode the gray there did he discover how Rubio intended to make good on his promise to crush the local peasantry like lice.

New conscripts were being herded off cattle cars. They had on the same ragged clothes they’d been wearing when they were rounded up. Most of them were barefoot.

Juan’s face lit up when he saw the stallion, but the horse race no longer mattered to Rico.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“Pochos.” The word meant northerners, more specifically Yaqui Indians. It was not a compliment. “This is the second load of them in the past three days.”

Rico shouldn’t have been surprised that Rubio would bring in outsiders to do his brutal bidding. Madero’s high-minded revolution had become a snake eating its own tail. Peace might be boring, but this was not the sort of warfare Rico had signed up for.