El Paso: A Novel (21 page)

“You gonna kill Pancho Villa?” Gourd Woman asked, breaking Johnny out of his reverie.

“He surely deserves it,” Johnny Ollas replied. “He murdered my father and took my woman.”

“And what if he kills you first?” she said. “Have you thought of that?”

“Nobody who fights bulls can be afraid of a
man
,” Johnny answered.

PART TWO

THE
DESIERTO

SEVENTEEN

A
rthur thought he had the flight licked and the race won, when trouble sought him out.
Grendel
was ticking along perfectly in a dry, cloudless sky over the flat, desolate landscape of southern New Mexico: a few tiny mining ghost towns, clusters of houses here and there, and narrow sandy roads that seemed to lead nowhere, even viewed from up in the air. Ahead, two ridges of tall bleak mountains ran north and south, and between them the pass he’d have to fly through to make El Paso.

Until he reached this pass, Arthur believed it would be an easy go.

It wasn’t.

Soon as Arthur put
Grendel
between the mountains, an ugly headwind began to strike him. It bucked and battered the plane upward and Arthur fought to hold on to it; then a downdraft hit him before a crosswind slipped him dangerously in the direction of a mountain peak.

Arthur struggled to keep
Grendel
straight and level; he flew at about eight thousand feet until suddenly the bottom dropped out. He tried climbing above the mountains, but up there the turbulence was worse. He descended into the pass to about four thousand feet, but there the headwinds had him. Scanning the horizon and the earth below, Arthur figured he wasn’t making much more than ten or fifteen knots’ headway.

This wouldn’t do at all; it was eating up too much fuel and not building enough airspeed. He dropped the manifold pressure and cut back on the RPMs to save gas, but he could see this wasn’t going to work for long.

Arthur had been caught in what the Navajo called the Paso del Ventoso, or Pass of the Winds, for nearly two hours and it was too late to turn around, just as it was not feasible to try to climb out over the mountain peaks. He was stuck and turned the taps for the first, second, and third jerry cans of extra gas, with only two more left and darkness on the horizon. Worst-case, the desert below seemed like a relatively good place to put down, and maybe the winds in the morning wouldn’t pick back up. On the other hand, he didn’t see anyplace where he might find more fuel. In all this time, he’d not noticed a single car, or even a wagon, on any of the roads.

Arthur kept flying as long as he thought prudent.

He certainly didn’t want to run completely low on fuel and of course understood the necessity of keeping at least one reserve tank full for taking off in the morning, if nothing else helped him.

He dropped down to five hundred feet and began scanning the ground ahead for a place to put down. The ground seemed all the same: sand, small cactus bushes, desert scrub, and the occasional rock. Arthur dropped lower, making sure to try to keep as close to a gravel road he’d spied as possible. He didn’t want to land on it because there were telegraph wires on both sides and he couldn’t tell how close they were; the Luft-Verkehrs had a wide wingspan.

There seemed a barer stretch ahead of a cactus patch, and Arthur throttled back and nosed the stick forward. The wheels touched the earth, bounced, touched again, hit something like a cactus, and the plane began a ground loop. Arthur applied the right brake, but by that time the
Grendel
jerked sideways, and when its nose pitched, Arthur heard the sound of the propeller snap as it hit the ground. At the same time as Arthur cut the engine off, the landing gear broke and
Grendel
pitched forward, tail upward, throwing Arthur against the control panel, where he hit his head. Then all was the silence of the desert.

Arthur rubbed his head, relieved he saw no blood on his hand. He climbed down and surveyed the damage. The smashed prop wasn’t a crisis because he’d brought a spare one, but the axle on the landing gear had broken. It was not destroyed, but this kind of repair needed a weld. Arthur had some other choices. The sleeve he’d brought in his spare-parts kit might get him into the air again, but landing would be a problem. Plus he was about out of gas.

He looked around him at the barrenness of the desert.

Here on the ground, no wind blew, not the faintest breeze.

Arthur climbed back into the cockpit and pulled out of his hamper a jar of peanut butter and a slice of bread and made himself a sandwich, which he sat eating on the lower wing. Assuming he replaced the prop, repaired the axle, and was able to take off, and the winds died down in the morning, Arthur figured he had only an hour’s worth left of flying time on the last fuel tank, which would put him down only forty or so miles ahead in the same bleak territory, and with no more fuel to take off again.

The sun had almost gone down now, throwing a burnished cast over the mountains and the desert, turning the grayish peaks an engaging color of orange and red. As Arthur contemplated his predicament, the faint sound of an engine began humming through the still desert air. In the shimmering burnished distance, sure enough, a big open car was headed toward him. Arthur hopped down from the wing and ran to the middle of the road. When the occupants of the car saw him and the tail-up airplane, they slowed to a stop. Arthur walked to the car. A man and a woman, nicely dressed, sat in the front seat.

“Have some trouble?” the man asked. He was young and striking-looking, with prominent ears and forehead, a lump jaw, wild wavy hair, and dark probing eyes. His voice was strong and authoritative. Arthur thought it was sort of a dumb question to ask, given the sight of the upturned plane.

“Have you passed by anyplace I can buy some gasoline?” Arthur asked.

“There’s a little station back about twenty miles,” the man said, “if he’s still open.”

How could he have missed it from the air? Arthur wondered. “My name is Arthur Shaughnessy,” he said, extending his hand.

“I am John Reed and this is Mabel Dodge,” the man said. “Are you just out for an afternoon’s aviating?”

“No, I came down from Chicago. I’m trying to get to El Paso.”

“You’re joking?” Reed said.

Arthur glanced over at his plane. Did it look like he was joking?

“Are you out to set some record?” Mabel Dodge asked.

“If it happens, it happens,” Arthur replied. “Mainly I’m just trying to get to El Paso. But the winds between these mountains almost ran me out of gas. I have some cans in the plane. You’re the first sign of civilization I’ve seen out here. I’d be glad to pay for your time if you’d drive me back to that gas station.”

“We’d be happy to help you in any way we can,” said Mabel Dodge. She was a handsome woman in a prickly sort of way, with large brown eyes and rouged cheeks, and she was wearing one of those little felt hats that looked like an overturned flowerpot. “We’re on our way to El Paso, too,” she said pleasantly, “and we know what it is to be stranded. Our train got stopped by a landslide back in Alpine, so we rented this car.”

Arthur and Reed went to the
Grendel
and Arthur began unfastening the jerry cans; Reed helped him carry them to the car before going back and uprighting the plane.

“What are you going to El Paso for?” Arthur asked Reed, as the car puttered north.

“I’m a reporter for the
New York World
. El Paso’s just the jumping-off point. I’m going into Mexico to cover the revolution.”

“The Pancho Villa revolution?” Arthur said.

“He’s the man of the hour,” Reed answered. He had a toothy grin and his teeth shone in the dusk as though they’d been radiated.

“And you, Miss Dodge, are you going with him?”

“Certainly not. Mexico’s no place for a lady,” she said, “at least not in these days and times.”

“Do you know where Villa is?”

“No,” Reed replied, “but I expect he won’t be hard to find.” They rode on in silence for a while, darkness closing across the glowing mountains.

“What about you, Mr. Shaughnessy?” Mabel asked. “Why did you choose El Paso as a destination?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Arthur told her. “I guess you could say I have family there.” He wondered if this could be the infamous Mabel Dodge, whose New York salon was the talk of the times. Unlike Xenia’s mildly scandalous gatherings in Boston that sometimes set the old blue noses gossiping, Mabel Dodge’s gatherings included real bomb-throwers of the radical left, such as “Big Bill” Hayward, Max Eastman, and Emma Goldman, among others. He remembered that the Colonel had known Mabel Dodge’s father, a wealthy banker from Buffalo who was utterly traumatized by her behavior.

“And where are you from, Miss Dodge?” Arthur inquired.

“New York City,” she replied, as if she’d lived there all her life.

“I thought so,” Arthur said.

Presently they arrived at the little shack where a hermit-looking Mexican with a hunched back sold gas and groceries. Arthur filled the cans, making sure to filter the fuel through a small mesh strainer, as well as a piece of porous matting he kept in the plane. When they returned to the desert site, Reed helped Arthur carry the cans to the plane.

“You’re certainly welcome to come along with us,” Reed said, eyeing the broken axle. “You might not be able to take off again.”

“Thank you,” Arthur replied, “but I imagine I can fix it enough to get into the air. Landing might be a little dicey, but I think I can make it all right.”

Reed shook his hand. “It’s a bold thing, coming all this way in that,” he said.

“Good luck, Mr. Reed,” Arthur told him. “I hope you get your story.”

When Reed and Mabel Dodge had gone on their way, Arthur fastened the gas cans back in place with the help of an electric torch, opened a bottle of beer, laid his sleeping bag out on the wing of
Grendel
, and stretched out under the hard desert stars. He wondered if the landslide that held up Reed’s train had also held up his father’s. He hoped it had.

Even before the sun began to break over the eastern escarpment Arthur had laid out his tools and spare-parts kit and found the metal sleeve to work over the broken axle. It was fashioned with flanges every six inches that bolted together, and when he finished, the thing seemed almost good as new. Next he removed the splintered propeller and replaced it with the spare one. He could feel no wind at ground level and, watching a hawk or buzzard soaring above, decided there didn’t seem to be much turbulence on high, either. With no wind at all, it would be difficult if not impossible to take off, because there’d be no lift on the wings. The desert remained so quiet it was almost spooky. Arthur went into the cockpit, switched on the magneto, eased the choke, and pulled the throttle out one-quarter. He got out and sprayed the carburetor with a can of ether, then took his best pull on the prop.

The Mercedes engine coughed once, then caught.

A more experienced aviator had once told him that if there was no wind, you could possibly stir up just enough yourself by revving the prop. Arthur tried it and, as he’d hoped, it caused a little breeze to come fluttering down the valley and he turned into it and up he went. Arthur climbed to five thousand feet and cruised southward as the sun climbed over the mountain range. The headwinds had abated.

By midafternoon he began to see signs of civilization on the horizon, little villages scattered off the main road, and by two p.m., with only a single can of fuel unused, he saw the spread of El Paso, nestled beneath tall, gray, jagged mountains, with the Rio Grande shimmering to the south.

The landing field was north of town; Arthur spotted it without trouble, disappointed that it was not a grass strip, but graded yellow dirt. He hoped for the sake of the axle it was smooth and not too hard. He circled twice to make sure there weren’t any wire poles in the way, then came in as slow as he dared. This time no crowd was there to greet him, but at least the axle held, and Arthur pulled the
Grendel
up to the flight shack and cut the engine. A grease monkey emerged and looked him over.

“You the one that come down from Chicago?” he asked.

Arthur nodded.

“That’s what I figured,” he said. “Your old man’s waiting for you at the hotel in town. He sent a man out this morning to say if you got in, to call him on the telephone and he’ll send a car out to pick you up.”

Appalled, Arthur asked where the telephone was. He might have been late, but he was no quitter, he thought disgustedly. Now he’d probably have the Old Man lording it over him the whole damned rest of the trip.

EIGHTEEN

A
mbrose Bierce was nearing the end of a long and distinguished career and welcomed it. He had been among the most popular story writers in America and his cynical newspaper columns brought him fame and fortune. But he was seventy-one years old, while most of his family and his contemporaries, friend and foe alike, had long since gone to the grave, and on a fine winter day while visiting New York City Bierce determined to put all this behind him and leave America forever. America repelled him now.

First, however, the old Civil War veteran decided he wanted to see one more war before he died, and the conflict presently raging in Mexico seemed like a perfect opportunity. He would probably die in Mexico, and that was all right with him, too. Before leaving, he wrote to one of his few remaining friends that he would most likely be “stood up against a wall and shot to rags—but isn’t that a lot better than dying in bed?”

To put himself in the mood, Bierce arranged that on the way down he would revisit the battlefields of his youthful service with the Union Army fifty years earlier. In Macy’s Department Store on Fifth Avenue, he bought himself a gold-embossed leather journal to record his adventures and withdrew from the Morgan Bank the sum of ten thousand dollars, cash.

He left by a night train to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and two days later visited Missionary Ridge, where he started a journal in the form of letters to Miss Christiansen, his secretary in Washington. He wrote: