Jim Kane - J P S Brown (46 page)

Tino Sierra, drunk in San Bernardo with his 25,000
pesos in his pockets from his gold` money and a pack train with
provisions bought and paid for, always felt rich enough to wear his
huaraches on the trail home to Macarena. He would set out in his
huaraches and when he began to sober up would lie down under a
sheltering rock to sleep. He would remove his
huaraches
so he could sleep more comfortably and would always
forget them when he resumed the trail, sober, in the morning. He
always arrived home in Macarena barefoot again.

Juan Vogel and Jim Kane heard a guitar, an accordion,
a violin, and someone singing somewhere up the street. They smelled
hot chili and the powdery fluff of flour tortillas. The night
freshened the smells of the brush around the town. Stars reflected in
the wide, deep Otero River that flowed under the cliff below the
town.

The music was coming from Tino Sierra's store. Most
of the people of Macarena were there. Kane and Vogel passed through
the people on the back patio where the musicians
were
playing.

Tino Sierra was dancing solo in the middle of the
patio. He was dancing the Mayo Indian
venado
,
the deer dance. His dark, lean face was shiny with grease and sweat.
His gray hair was neatly barbered under the straw hat. His white
dress shirt was filthy and unbuttoned. He was barefoot. He had lost
his
huaraches
somewhere
again. His broad feet looked numb and rubbery as they stamped and
scuffed and shuffled on the beaten dusty ground of the patio; as numb
as the immobile face, the stiffened arms and torso, and the rigid
legs that pounded the feet in time with the music.

Tino Sierra's wife, a plain, thin woman, gave Kane
and Vogel seats at the kitchen table by an open oven where she was
cooking.

A tiny boy sat at the table eating his supper of red
chili meat and tortillas with his fingers. His round black eyes
stared at Kane unashamedly as he ate and got chili all over his face.
His little legs stuck straight out from the chair under the table, He
wiggled his bare toes, ate his chili with his fingers, and stared at
Jim Kane. This was Miguel, five-year-old son of Tino Sierra.

Amador, the older son, came up to the table and got
permission from Juan Vogel to take Pajaro and the bay horse to the
river to water.

"
OK!" a voice rasped incongruously through
the quiet-voweled Spanish of the voices at the party.
"Nevairbecausstheless, OK!
Yo boracho
spik Eenglis!
" Tino Sierra said,
planting both hands on Kane's shoulders from behind. Then he laughed
and said, "I knew Juan Vogel would come when he found out I was
giving my beer away. "

"
I wanted to see you drunk again, Tino,"
Juan Vogel said. "It is so seldom that I see you drunk and
barefooted and with your shirt unbuttoned."

Tino walked around the table and stood over Juan
Vogel. "Has the
gringuito
beaten you up lately? Maybe I can pay him to beat you up
for me," he said.
 
"
No.
He likes me now because I brought him to the Sierra. I gave him the
opportunity to see the
onza
today
and to see savages like you at play. Button your shirt if you are
going to stand over me like this! It gives me nausea to see your
naked navel!"

"
Hah! Because you wear an undershirt all the
time and underpants, you believe me to be a savage because I don't
wear them. This for your undershirt!" Tino said, and grabbed
Juan Vogel's undershirt where it showed inside his shirt collar and
ripped it out. The snaps of Juan Vogel's Western shirt unsnapped and
Tino tore the whole undershirt out without harming the outer shirt.
He waved the undershirt over his head.

"I present to you, my invited guests, half of
Juan Vogel's interior clothing. I will produce the lower half next,"
he shouted bloodthirstily.

"
Come on then and get it over with. " Juan
Vogel laughed.

"
Not now. Later, when you are not prepared for
it," Tino said. "Now we must have respect for the feast day
of my
comadre
,
Isabelita." He left them for a few moments and came back with a
comely young girl whom he presented to Kane. "Jim Kane, this is
my comadre, Isabelita. You may dance with her but do not take her out
of the house. That honor and privilege I reserve for myself, "
Tino said.

Kane danced with the girl and other girls Tino Sierra
presented to him. The fiesta gained momentum. The
mezcal
and beer took hold of the guests. Just when it seemed to
Kane that the musicians were making their best music and warming to
it with the spirits, the fathers of the town crossed the patio and
took their daughters arms and escorted them home. Tino was insisting
on accompanying his
comadre
Isabel
when her father arrived and took her away from him. The hour was
early but the dancing had ended. .

Tino Sierra was drunk as were all the men who
remained at his house. The musicians were drunk and continued to play
and sing. They charged fifty centavos for a song. They did not rest.
They patted their
huaraches
on
the ground keeping time. The bones in their naked toes rose and
settled in the dust in pace with their music.

Juan Vogel had been in the store. He came back to the
table where Tino Sierra now slumped. Two men were with Juan Vogel.
Vogel carried a pair of new boots. He turned Tino's chair around so
that Tino's legs were out from under the table. Tino only vaguely
noticed this. Juan Vogel picked up one of the legs and placed the
sole of one of the new boots against the bare sole of Tino's foot,
measuring it. Tino began to regain consciousness.

"
These will fit. Hold him now," Juan Vogel
said to the two men. One man, smiling self-consciously, held Tino's
arms and shoulders against the back of the chair. Another man sat on
his lap. Juan Vogel straddled a leg and began working one of the
boots onto Tino's stubby foot. Tino came to. He bucked. He kicked at
Vogel with both feet but the weight of the men held him down. He
howled when he realized the fullness of the atrocity being done to
him. He shouted obscenities at Juan Vogel. .
 
"
Quiet! Sssst! Tino! Don't be a bad talker,"
his wife admonished him. She was drying her dishes. Little Miguel
watched from his chair by the fire, smiling and wiggling his toes
with happiness.

When Tino saw that all his protestations and threats
did not influence Vogel, he sulled. His leg became so limber that the
man on his lap had to hold the leg so that Vogel could push the other
boot on. When both boots were on the limp feet the three men turned
Tino Sierra loose.

He sat in his chair seeing no one. He refused to look
at the booted feet. He ignored the feet as though he had disowned
them and they were no longer part of him.

"
Come on now, Tino," Juan Vogel said. "Get
up and walk. See how reasonable people get about in this epoch."

"
¡Viva México!
"
Tino Sierra shouted as though he, a patriot, had just been stood
against the big wall for his turn before the firing squad.

"Try to walk, Tino. The boots are from your own
shelves. They won't kill you," Juan Vogel coaxed.

"
¡Viva México! ¡Viva Benito Juarez!
"
And bad act the mothers of all the French tyrants!" Tino Sierra
shouted with brave style into the face of his persecutor.

"
Come now, Tino. The revolution has enabled all
men, even Indians like you, to throw away their
huaraches
and wear leather boots." Juan Vogel said.

"
And bad act the mothers of all mercenaries!
German!" Tino Sierra shouted at Juan Vogel.

Juan Vogel stopped laughing. He lifted Tino Sierra
off his chair and tried to stand him up in the boots. The boot soles
would not touch the floor. Their outer edges dragged. Tino sagged.
His arms slid through Vogel's hands, his limp hands met over his
head, his rear end bumped the floor. Vogel motioned to his two
deputies and the three men lifted Tino again. Vogel held him from
behind by the waist of his pants and tried to make the boots meet the
floor properly as the two men carried Tino along. The toes of the
boots pigeon-toed and dragged across the floor refusing to step, but
making twin toe trails across the dust of the patio where Tino had so
recently danced so manfully the fine cultural dance of the Mayos.

They left Tino Sierra sitting on his crumpled legs in
the center of the patio. He had triumphed. He had not taken one step
in the new boots. Juan Vogel went into the store and filled a liter
bottle with
mezcal
from
a barrel and gave it to his deputies. Then Kane and Vogel went back
to the schoolmaster's house and went to bed.

The two deputies built a fire for the night on the
edge of the river under the cliff below Macarena. They sat by the
fire with their blankets over their shoulders, the bottle of mezcal
between them.

"That Juanito Vogel thinks of imaginative jokes
to play," one of the deputies offered sadly.

"
Yes. He and Tino Sierra are always joking with
each other;" the other deputy said. "Very funny. All very
funny, ha, ha." He tried to laugh. He could not be altogether
happy because he wanted to start drinking from the liter of
mezcal
and he could see his companion wasn't in the mood to
drink yet. His companion wanted conversation first.

"Yes, it was all very funny, but Tino irrigated
everyone with curses," the first deputy said.

"
I don't believe he meant our mothers," the
second deputy said. "He wouldn't have meant to curse our
mothers. It was Vogel he was angry with."

"
Vogel and the French. Is Vogel a foreigner? I
never thought he was."

"Vogel is German. His father was German."

"Still, his father was born in the Sierra and
his mother is Mexican. She was raised in the Sierra. In Chinipas."

"Yes, his mother is Mexican."

For a moment they silently thought over this last
truth they had unearthed.

"
It all leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.
I am sorry I helped Juanito Vogel," the first deputy finally
decided.

"
Compadre
, have some
of Tino's wine to clean your mouth," the second deputy said,
keeping his eyes on the
mezcal
.

The first deputy reached for the bottle. A heavily
whirring, swishing object hit the fire beside the two men and sprayed
them with flame and sparks. A second whirr, a second swish, and
sparks exploded inside the head of the first deputy just as he looked
up into the clear night to see where the first missile had come from.

"
And bad act all the mothers of all the traitors
to the revolution and Benito Juarez and Tino Sierra!" a powerful
voice shouted from the cliff of Macarena above the deputies, heads.

The second deputy looked down and saw that the new
boots lay on the sand near them. They had been slashed by a knife in
the freeing of the toes of Tino Sierra.

"
See? He hasn't forgotten, compadre," the
second deputy said. "I told you. Nor will he forget. Did the
boot hit you?"

"
Sí
."

"
What a vicious man! Where did it hit you?"

"
Exactly on my
calabaza
,
my gourd."

"
Are you all right?"

"I'm better now, " the first deputy said,
picking up one of the boots. "I'll wager the new boots are
beyond repair."

"
¡Lastima!
It was
not the fault of the boots," the second deputy said. "Do
you think you could swallow a little drink now.

"
Yes. I think so now," the injured deputy
said.
 

25
The
Eagle

Kane traded for the Macarena cattle the morning after
Tino Sierra's party. He would receive the cattle and pay for them in
Chinipas. He and Juan Vogel rode across the mountains as far as
Tetamoa that evening.

Tetamoa was a camp on the ranch of Don Marcos
Aguilera. Don Marcos had sent word to Kane and Vogel that he had
fifteen head of young bulls for them. The camp was at the base of a
mountain on the Chihuahua-Sonora Divide. They arrived at Tetamoa at
dark. Vogel did not want to go up the long climb over a trail of
sheer rock to Don Marcos' headquarters at the top of the mountain in
the dark. The two men unsaddled their horses, fed them, ate supper
with Don Marcos' goat herd, and bedded down at Tetamoa for the night.

Late in the night when he had long been asleep a
drunken voice calling Vogel awakened Kane.

"
Get up, Juanito. Get up," the voice
demanded.

"Get up, Juanito," another voice said in a
copy of the first voice's tone.

"
What is it?" Juan Vogel answered from deep
in his blankets.