34

Railroaded

Even here in this tiny village without a train depot, the local women and their wares swarmed around Rico and Grullo like enterprising flies. The Baldwin engine arrived on time. Rico took that as a good omen, although for what, he could not have said.

The Baldwin was almost as old as Rico’s grandfather and almost as loud and irrascible. As it chuffed and clanged to a stop, its wreath of steam reminded Rico of the Old Man’s luxuriant crop of white hair.

Everyone in Morelos was proud of this railroad. Foreigners had built rail lines in other states to transport Mexico’s oil, minerals, and sugar out of the country efficiently so the rich gringo capitalists could get richer faster. This one served the same purpose, but at least it was the only railroad built and operated by Mexicans.

The iron rails and spikes came from England, but the passenger cars were made from the wood of local trees. The line cost six million pesos and at the peak of construction three thousand men worked on it. For all that, on any given day its timely arrival depended on love, or at least sex. The sex life of Hanibal the engineer to be exact.

Rico bribed a worker to let him load Grullo into the boxcar instead of the stock car. If the colonel was still at Tres Marías when the train pulled in he wouldn’t likely check on the cargo and discover the handsome Andalusian stallion among the crates and sacks.

For the same reason, Rico passed the first and second-class coaches. He strode through the fog of steam hissing from the drive wheels, swung up into the cab of the locomotive, and breathed in the bracing bouquet of oil and hot metal.

He had been acquainted with Hanibal, the engineer, for many years, but he knew that he and his Mauser would be welcome as protection in any case. He nodded to the fireman, who raised a hand in half salute and went back to staring at his dials. The cheery glow and low grumble beyond the open door of the boiler seemed to Rico the aura of an amiable genie willing to grant the gift of speed if asked properly.

Rico guessed that Hanibal was crowding fifty. His face was constructed of thick bones covered with well-oiled skin that thwarted the sun’s attempts to age him. His hair would have been streaked with gray if he hadn’t combed black shoe polish into it and slicked it back.

“Good day, Captain. Are you riding my elephant over the alps today?”

“I am.”

Hanibal nodded at the cord hanging diagonally overhead and Rico reached up and pulled it. The shriek from the steam whistle signaled the brakeman to unlock the brakes on the cars. Hanibal eased the throttle forward.

Twenty tons of iron shuddered around Rico, then stirred under him. The vibrations coursed up from the soles of his feet as the locomotive gathered speed. If Rico had occupied a stained, velvet seat in the first-class coach he would not have felt the brute power pulsing through him. Nor could the view from a coach window compare to standing here, high above the awe-inspiring scenery and surrounded by dials, red-painted valve handles, and shiny black gears.

Hanibal was an affable man, but he stared at the rails ahead as though he were the cab’s only occupant. Rico took no offense at being ignored. He, too, was on the lookout for the wink of sunlight on a rifle barrel among the rocks. Tunnels and long curves made him particularly wary. Rebels and bandits preferred to leave their surprises on the tracks out of sight beyond tunnels and long curves.

A sniper’s bullet had plowed a narrow furrow along the side of Hanibal’s skull, leaving an errant part in his hair. Another ball of lead ricocheting around the cab had left the little finger of his right hand numb. He held it stiffly extended when he operated the throttle, like an English squire sipping tea.

Like Grace sipping tea.

Rico wondered if ever a day would come when some subtle detail did not remind him of her. He doubted it.

To distract himself he asked, “Is it true that you built this engine?”

“No, señor. My elefante came from California.” Hanibal said the word “California” with the tone reserved for Eden, Elysium, and Goshen, that biblical utopia fertile and free of the plague of war. “They could not drive her onto the ship so they took her apart. They dipped each rod and bolt in oil. They wrapped them all in straw and packed them in wooden boxes. I found them stacked on the dock at Acapulco. A mountain of boxes. A cordillera of boxes. We loaded them onto mules and hauled them here.”

“Had you ever assembled a locomotive before?”

Hanibal gave him a sardonic glance. “Don Federico, I tell you the truth when I say that I did not know what a locomotive looked like.”

“Then why did they hire you for the job?”

Hanibal’s answer included English words for the gringo technology that under Díaz’s thirty-year regime had barged into Mexico like a fat drunk into a cantina.

“When I worked in the mines I learned how to repair engines, boilers, riveters, torsion spring hammers, gang saws, circular saws. I can bring back to life anything that operates with God’s breath.” Hanibal always referred to steam as el súspiro de Dios.

As they approached the station at Tres Marías, Rico saw the gnarled huizache known as the hanging tree. General Rubio had selected it for executions because it stood at the crest of the ridge. Trains coming from north and south had to slow while the engine labored up the steep slope. Passengers and crew had time to take long, instructional looks.

The Gonzales boy was hanging from one of its horizontal branches. He was silhouetted against the sunset sky, his chin resting on his chest as if bowed in prayer. Soon the parched mountain air would dry his corpse like a slice of mango. He would hang there until another miscreant replaced him.

Rico remembered the boy’s smile, how hard he worked, and his eagerness to please. The sight of him added to Rico’s sorrows and regrets. His biggest regret was that he had been so full of hatred when the boy was captured that he wouldn’t have saved him if he could.

As the tile roof of Cuernavaca’s depot came into sight, Rico moved against the back wall, out of sight of the cab window. Hanibal and the fireman glanced at him and then at each other, but they said nothing. They preserved their health and livelihoods by not poking their noses into el gobierno’s business.

As Hanibal had observed more than once when an army officer was not within hearing, “My policy is to stand back and let the scorpions sting each other to death.”

 

Rico wasn’t surprised to find the Colonial’s lobby deserted. Grace had always given her hotel its life and vivacity. He would have been distressed to find everyone carrying on as usual.

His boots echoed when he crossed the ballroom to where Grace’s piano stood, the top lowered, the keyboard covered. He ran his fingers across the lid and they left a gleaming track in the dust. That saddened him more than the echoing corridors. Rico had never seen dust on the piano.

He went to the front desk and called out. “Lyda! Annie!”

The answer was not what he expected. A scream came from the kitchen and he headed there at a run. He found the maids and the kitchen staff huddled next to the big table in the middle of the room. Wing Ang stirred a pot at the huge adobe stove as if none of this concerned him, but the weeping women clustered around Rico. Some caught his sleeve. Others knelt, their palms together in supplication. All of them begged him, for the love of God, to save Socorro.

“José’s daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she?”

“The brute took her.” They pointed to the back stairs that the servants used.

“Rubio?”

“Yes, Rubio.”

Rico ran up the stairs two at a time. Socorro’s screams became louder. Rubio hadn’t bothered to close the door. His trousers already encircled his knees. He had thrown the girl onto the bed and pinned her there. He covered her mouth and nose with one hand and clawed at her skirt with the other.

Rico crossed the room in three strides. With both hands he grabbed the back of Rubio’s sweat-stained uniform jacket. He had thought he was done with hatred, but now he was given the strength of two men by a loathing whose intensity surprised even him. He lifted Rubio and heaved him off the bed like a sack of cornmeal thrown from the back of a wagon. Socorro slid past them and ran for the door.

“¡Hijo de la madre de todas las putas!” Brandy slurred Rubio’s speech. His beady eyes were glazed, and his breath smelled like plums rotting in a barrel.

He swung a round house right and missed. The momentum spun him like a top, winding him up in the pants still crumpled around his knees. He toppled forward reaching for Rico as he fell. Rico had seen Rubio drunk more often than sober. He knew how clumsy and cowardly he was, but he forgot that cowards can be cunning.

Rubio yanked on the cord hidden next to the bed. The other end was attached to a bell in the guards’ quarters off the back courtyard.

Rubio pulled up his trousers then lunged at Rico, who circled him like a matador. Rico could have left, but he wanted to give Socorro time to escape. He assumed the army would dock him for this, but he rarely bothered to collect his pay anyway. The possibility of a court-martial didn’t worry him. His grandfather’s influence among the ruling elite had always gotten him out of scrapes before.

Then he remembered. None of that mattered. By the day after tomorrow he and Juan would be on their way to join the army that Venustiano Carranza was raising.

A sergeant and two privates formed a clot in the doorway. From where they stood the general and the captain appeared to be engaged in an odd sort of dance.

“What’s happening here, my General?” the sergeant asked.

“Shoot the son of a bitch,” Rubio screamed.

Rico half-turned so he could look at them and keep an eye on Rubio, too. He held his hands away from his sides to show he had no intention of drawing his pistol.

“Pay no attention to the general. He’s drunk.”

“Don’t shoot him.” Rubio had a change of mind, if not of heart. “Arrest him.”

The soldiers took Rico’s Colt pistols and marched him out of the Colonial’s front door and down the street. Rubio waddled behind them to the massive stone building that served as a prison. Wood smoke and the aroma of roasting meat drifted out of it. The authorities provided no food or clothing for the men and women jailed here, so they depended on their families for life’s necessities.

A parallel economy had evolved as a result. The inner courtyard looked like any market in the city, except that when the sun set, the vendors would return to their cells and not their homes.

Prisoners and visitors alike bargained for goods in the stalls. Rows of women cooked the evening meal on small charcoal fires. People parted to make way for Rico, Rubio, his soldiers, and two jail guards as they headed for the wing that housed the military detainees.

Rico walked down a long, dimly lit hall and into a windowless cell that smelled like an open sewer. The rats that scurried for cover looked as big as the hairless dogs from the state of Chihuahua. Cockroaches swarmed on the dank, bloodstained walls. Old feces and dried vomit formed crusts on the dirt floor. A pile of filthy straw occupied one corner and a battered tin bucket stood in the other. The bucket’s function was evident from the feces that crusted it.

The door clanged shut behind him. Rubio grasped the bars as if he wished they were Rico’s throat. Rico walked away and faced the rear of the cell. He stuck his hands in his pockets and cocked one ankle as casually as if admiring art on a gallery wall.

Rubio shouted at his back, spraying the bars with spittle.

“I shall see you executed at sunup, you smug, coddled, worthless, dog-shit bastard son of an Indian whore.” He turned to the prison guards. “No food. No water. No visitors. Anyone who agrees to carry a message for him will hang beside him.”

Rubio reeled away. The two jailers sauntered off to continue their card game in the guardroom. Rico prowled the cell’s perimeter, looking for some way to escape. He found none.

He had been in jail before in his misspent youth, usually on drunk and disorderly charges. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, crossed his ankles again, and folded his arms on his chest. One skill a soldier learned early was how to sleep standing up. This would be a long night, but he would not dirty his uniform nor bruise his dignity by lying in the filthy heap of straw.

He didn’t think Fatso would carry out the execution order. Not even Rubio was stupid enough to hang the scion of the Martín clan. Unless, of course, he was still drunk. Rico did not care much either way.

Grace was dead. What reason had he to live?