8

Lethal Beans

Antonio’s thirteen-year-old sister, Socorro, called softly at the cave entrance. She toted an old rectangular Standard Oil can with the top cut off and a rope handle attached. It held beans cooked with chilis and a stack of tortillas wrapped in banana leaves. Tied on her back was a blue cotton shawl containing twelve small pots made of the local red clay.

The pots all had arrived intact, which was remarkable, considering that she had had to descend a sheer cliff wall to reach her brother’s hideout. A thread of a trail led from the village above down to the river, but if the dense growth of bushes hadn’t provided handholds, Socorro wouldn’t have been able to keep to it.

The cave’s wide, low opening in the cliff face was twenty-five feet above the river tumbling along the bottom of the barranca, a deep, narrow canyon. The canyon began abruptly not too far upstream, which meant the river made a sudden drop over the edge of it, landing a hundred feet below in a cloud of mist. Dozens of swallows darted in and out of the spray. The cascade filled the cave with a low roar.

Angela divided the clay pots among them so they could practice making grenades. She did not want to arrive at General Zapata’s headquarters looking unprepared for war. She had spent a fourth of her father’s pesos to buy ingredients for the grenades—a mix of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur, plus cotton fuses, and ground-up dried beans for filler. She used a battered wooden kitchen ladle to scoop the gunpowder out of one small sack and the dried beans out of another. The potters of San Miguel supplied the vessels.

Plinio, to Angela’s surprise, admitted that he had made grenades before. He knew what quantity of beans to add to make the powder stretch further, and still go “Boom!” Antonio was melting paraffin in a small tin can to seal the pots’ mouths. The fuses protruded like tongues from the wax.

Socorro looked at yesterday’s finished grenades stacked on a mat at the back of the cave. They had a rollicking, roly-poly look to them, like children waiting for school recess.

“Papi wants to know if you need more pots.”

Angela hefted the half-empty sack. “Give your father our thanks, but we have only enough powder to fill these.”

Antonio studied his sister through narrowed eyes. “Do you weigh more than when I saw you last?”

“No.”

He lifted the hem of her skirt to expose another one underneath.

“Why are you wearing two sets of clothes?”

“I’m going with you.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Señorita Angela rides with you. Why can’t I?”

“Because I said so. Now go. And tell Papá to meet us at the old field with the mare and the mules.”

Socorro glared at him before she went, but Angela knew what Antonio was thinking. His sister was very pretty. Some officer in the rebel army would try to recruit her as his concubine, and Antonio would have to kill him.

The men went outside with the rations Socorro had brought. They ate sitting along the narrow ledge by the cave’s entrance. From here they had a bird’s-eye view of the river and the swallows darting.

After they had eaten, the men unrolled their mats in the cave and took a siesta. When the wax had hardened, sealing the gunpowder in the pots, Angela prodded her troops with her foot.

“Gather your things. Pick up every piece of trash. We do not want to leave anything that might cause el gobierno to suspect Antonio’s people of hiding us.” She handed a bundle of brush to Ambrozio Nuñez, the last young man to join the group. She chose him because he looked the most likely to object. “When we’ve gone outside, sweep away all the footprints.”

“That’s woman’s work,” he said.

“Do you see women here?”

“I see one.”

Plinio chuckled. The other men were familiar with Angela’s temper. They swallowed their laughter so as not to attract her wrath. They all had seen her throw rocks with unerring accuracy and hit crows scavenging corn in a field. They could imagine the damage she might inflict at this close range.

“If you do not want to take orders from a woman, why did you join us?”

“I didn’t know you were female.” He used the word hembra. It described not a woman but a female animal.

The men backed away from him. When Angela whacked him with what ever came to hand they didn’t want to get in the way.

Instead she said, “I understand, pendejocito. You have lost your courage. You want an excuse not to ride with us and fight for your countrymen.”

He started to object, but she raised a hand and smiled. “Go in peace, coño. We will deliver your regrets to General Zapata. We will tell him that Ambrozio Nuñez of pueblo Azcatl went home with his tail between his legs. We will tell him that Ambrozio Nuñez is content to let the women fight for his people’s land.”

“I will fight alongside men, but not women.” He picked up his bedroll, machete, and satchel and stalked out of the cave.

“May snakes and toads crawl out of your mouth,” Angela called after him. “May your insignificant penis shrivel up like a chili pepper.”

He looked back and crossed himself several times before he started up the trail to the top of the barranca. The perilous climb was not what worried him. His village lay not far from Miguel Sanchez’s hacienda. He had heard stories about the tricks she played. No one claimed she had supernatural powers, just a long memory and a strong shoulder for carrying a grudge.

Angela slung a pouch of grenades across her shoulder. She rolled her blanket inside her mat. She buckled the almost-empty cartridge belt at her waist. She put on her sombrero and retrieved her father’s 30-30 from where it leaned against the cave wall.

As the men filed out past her she laid a hand on Plinio’s arm to keep him with her.

“Grandfather,” she murmured. “You should lead them.”

“No, my daughter. God has chosen you.”

“What if I can’t do this?”

“God says you can. Who are we to question God?”

Angela sighed and followed her family’s old mayordomo outside. The men waited on the ledge with their backs pressed against the cliff wall. Her band’s mission now was to do what the government’s soldiers couldn’t. They had to find General Emiliano Zapata and the troops he called the Liberating Army of the South.

“Adelante, mis guachos. Forward, my foundlings,” she said. “For land and liberty.”