Last Train from Cuernavaca (27 page)

Grace packed a single valise. She only intended to stay in Mexico City long enough to visit President Huerta and, if necessary, find
Señor
Bonifacio Martín. She dreaded seeing Huerta. He obviously had not mellowed since the days he quartered at the Colonial. She hoped he would be sober, but she wasn't counting on it. From what she had heard about Rico's grandfather, she wasn't eager to meet him either.

Her late husband's family had provided most of the information concerning
Don
Bonifacio. Workers had braved sniper fire to restore the telegraph wires and Grace had exchanged a flurry of cables with her former in-laws. They insisted that she stay with them while in the capital.

Messengers also delivered telegrams from several of the Colonial's frequent guests from Mexico City. They said they had heard that Cuernavaca was peaceful and they planned to arrive on Friday's train. Lyda was ecstatic. Grace ventured cautious optimism, but remembered what María often said:
“La confianza mata al hombre.”
Confidence kills the man.

To the casual visitor, Cuernavaca did seem its normal, carefree self. Thanks to the promise General Huerta made to Grace two years ago, a military band gave a concert every night in the kiosk just across the tram tracks from the Colonial's front door. Cuernavacans attended stage plays and dances. They “oohed” and “aahed” at the moving pictures shown in the new theater. Families and lovers strolled through Borda Gardens and rowed boats among the waterlilies on its lake.

Grace took a horse-drawn cab to the depot. She arrived early, only to learn that some mechanical problem would delay departure by at least two hours. She had brought a copy of
Ben Hur
to read on the train and she headed for the big waiting room to lose herself in the story. She stopped when the station master's office door opened and two soldiers hauled a familiar figure along between them. Their prisoner sagged in their grip. A starched-and-pressed colonel followed.

“
Señor
Perez,” Grace called out.

As the soldiers hustled José away he turned to look at her, though his eyes were almost swollen shut. He spoke through bruised lips.

“Good morning,
Señora
Knight. May God keep you in His care.”

Grace walked alongside the colonel and chose her Spanish words carefully. Irritating or insulting him would not help José.

“Where is Mr. Perez going?”

“To Quintana Roo, to the jungle where such wild animals belong. They'll leave with the troop train tonight.”

“He's an honest man, Colonel. He's one of my employees. Let him come with me and I will be responsible for him.”

“I must follow General Rubio's orders.”

The crowd of waiting passengers made way for the armed soldiers, but not for Grace. As they closed in behind José she lost sight of him. She hurried down the steps at the end of the platform and strode through the steam and cinders in search of him.

She found soldiers loading him and seventy-five or eighty other prisoners into a cattle car on a siding. The guards prodded their charges with bayonets, but none of the men resisted. They didn't plead or protest. Silent and stoic in their white cotton trousers and shirts, they looked like the impoverished farmers they were.

Their women, some with small children slung in the blue
rebozos
at their backs, climbed the rungs bolted onto the side of the car. Others handed their toddlers to those already on top. They settled in up there with satchels and baskets, hands of bananas, birds in cages, live chickens, and blanket rolls. Grace looked for Serafina, but did not see her or Socorro.

She tried to reason with the colonel.

“You mustn't crowd those men like that. They can't even sit down. They will starve or smother or be trampled to death.”

“If it is God's wish that some of them die, that will leave more room for the others. So you see you have no need to concern yourself,
señora
.”

Grace stood on tiptoe, put her face to an opening between the slats that made up the sides, and called out.

“José.”

He made his way to her and crouched to be at her level. Grace didn't know what to say. She could promise to try to convince Rubio to free him, but she and José both knew he would never do it. Socrates had finally told her that José had helped Rico escape from jail. Grace wondered if that was why the soldiers had taken him prisoner.

“Where are Fina and Cora?” she asked.

“They're safe,
señora
.”

“What do you need most? What can I bring you and the others?”

He shook his head. “Do not trouble yourself,
Mamacita
. God will care for us.”

Grace wanted to point out that if God cared for them they wouldn't be in this stock car.

“Helping you is no trouble, José. I can never repay you for saving Captain Martín's life.”

“He saved my daughter's honor. I owe him more than my life.” He put his face close to the slats so the guards would not hear. “You and
Señora
Lyda and her daughter must take the morning train to Mexico City. Do not take this evening train.”

She nodded. “I came here to take the early train.”

“Good.”

The guard noticed them whispering.
“¡Váyase!”
He waved his rifle at Grace to shoo her off.
“Vaya.”

He was young and excitable, and Grace backed away with her hands up, palms out to show she was not passing anything to the prisoners.

She hurried to the telegraph office and composed a cable. She paid extra to have it delivered to the Colonial as fast as possible. She dared not mention José in the message, but she asked Lyda to collect all the blankets not in use and have Socrates bring them to the train station right away.

She left the depot and crossed the street to the local market. The flies swarmed as thickly as ever. Blue-jacketed soldiers were more numerous than ever. The place wasn't empty, but the goods looked as picked over as if it were late afternoon.

Grace bought every chicken, bundle of tortillas, and sack of cornmeal and beans she could find. She added serapes and shirts, jars of water, and what ever small items she thought might be useful for such a long journey. Hiring a man with a barrow to bring the goods back across the street lightened Grace's purse even more.

Lyda, Annie, and Socrates were unloading blankets from a station cab as Grace arrived with the supplies. The sight of Annie disconcerted her. The child mustn't find out about José and the cattle car, but how to explain the need for all those blankets?

“Gracie, have you been to the market alone?” Lyda asked

“It was safe. The place teems with soldiers.”

Lyda made a face.

“What?”

“Rubio has ordered them to patrol the markets and prevent food from leaving Cuernavaca. He intends to starve out the villagers.”

Starve out the villagers. Grace was appalled. And as usual with Rubio's tactics, it was having unplanned-for consequences. His current scheme had apparently affected the supply of food coming into the city as well as going out. Grace knew Rubio's lack of intellect well enough not to ask herself why that had not occurred to him.

Hardly able to see over the stacks of blankets, Grace, Lyda, and Socrates marched down the platform. Lyda glanced back at the barrow rolling along behind them.

“Why do you need blankets and all this truck?”

“They've taken Mr. Perez prisoner.”

“Has something happened to Cora's father?” Annie looked distraught.

“They've captured José?” asked Lyda. “What did he do?”

“I don't know. None of them looks like an insurgent.”

“None of them? How many are there, Gracie?”

“Seventy-five, maybe a hundred.”

“Oh, dear lord.”

Annie ran on ahead, down the platform stairs, and onto the gravel right-of-way. The brakemen had attached the stock car to the rear of the troop train waiting on the siding for the train's evening departure. When Grace and Lyda arrived, Annie was standing on the narrow ledge where the car's floor projected beyond the slatted sides. She had hooked her arm between two of the horizonal boards.

Annie looked at them with tears streaming down her cheeks. “Don't let them take Socorro's
papi
away.”

“There's nothing we can do, Annie.”

Annie hiked up her skirts and charged past before Lyda could grab her. With both fists she pounded on the chest of the nearest guard.

“¡Bruto! Chinga tu madre.”

She accompanied the beating with an impressive assortment of slurs in English, Spanish, and Nahuatl. When she ran short in one language, she switched to another.

Grace stood frozen in horror, expecting the guard to knock the child senseless or skewer her with his bayonet. But he looked embarrassed and almost sad as he held up his arms to take the blows. Lyda grabbed Annie around the waist and pulled her away. Grace helped Lyda hold her as she kicked and wriggled.

“They're going to hang them all at Tres Marías,” Annie wailed. “Don't let them kill Cora's
papi
.”

“They're not going to kill him. They're taking him to another state.”

The thought of the army executing José hadn't occurred to Grace. She had a stomach-churning image of returning from Mexico City and seeing him hanging among the bandits and rebels in the gnarled old tree near the crossroads.

Lyda distracted her daughter with a task. “Annie, your Injun talk is better than ours. Help distribute the beans and fixin's to the women up top there.” She nodded at the families camped on the roof of the car. “They'll be cooking for the men.”

Annie pulled the back hem of her skirt between her legs and knotted it to her belt in front to create trousers of a sort. She scrambled up the ladder to oversee the distribution of the supplies.

Lyda shoved the blankets and clothing through the openings between the slats while Grace kept the guards at bay with the last of the coins in her purse. Then she went back to bid José farewell.

He put a hand through the slats and grabbed her wrist. That he would touch her indicated the urgency of what he had to say. Grace thought, not for the first time, that José had the saddest, most luminous eyes in creation.

“
Mamacita,
promise me you will take the early train today.”

“I will.”

“Tell the
Americana
that she and her daughter must go also.”

“I'll tell them.”

The truth was, Grace had no money left for a ticket on the early train, much less for three tickets. She would have to postpone the trip until tomorrow, but she would not add to José's distress by telling him so.

Grace held on to José's hand. “God go with you, my friend.”

“And with you,
Mamacita.
”

“Good-bye,
Papi.
” Annie clung to the slats so fiercely that Lyda and Grace had to pry her fingers off and pull her down from the car.

As Grace and Lyda led Annie away, Grace did not see Angel and Antonio climb up the rungs on the opposite side of the stock car. Nor did they see her.

The federal uniform Antonio wore and the army-issue Mauser he carried made him look the part of a soldier ordered to guard the women. Angel, dressed in skirt and blouse, handed up what appeared to be a baby wrapped in a shawl. She adjusted the large bundle slung across her back and climbed after him. She settled down to wait for evening and the troop train's departure.

Angel was counting on the government soldiers to be on guard against an attack from the ground, but not from above. If Angel's scheme worked, this would be the last train to leave Cuernavaca.

As the evening troop train left Cuernavaca, the women and children camped on top of the stock car sought relief from the late afternoon sun. They huddled under scraps of canvas, burlap feed sacks, articles of clothing, and palm fronds. A lucky few had umbrellas. They sat on their sleeping mats, but still they felt the heat of the corrugated steel roof under them.

By sunset the steel felt hot enough to toast tortillas, but Angel was grateful for a clear sky. Rain would have made blowing up the train more difficult, but blow it up she would.

The train made its usual slow progress across the valley and into the foothills. A full moon rose as darkness fell. Its orbit brought it as close to earth tonight as it ever came. It looked unnaturally large, as if it had defied the laws of the universe and left its usual orbit. It was so bright that its light cast shadows. Angel could see the pinks, purples, reds, and oranges of the bouganvillea flowers along the railbed.

The devout ones on the roof saw the moonlight as a sign that God was with them on this mission. Angel knew better. The Devil might approve, but she did not expect God to condone what she was about to do. She would have much to confess, if she ever met up with a priest again.

Angel had wrapped three eight-inch-long sticks of dynamite in oilcloth before folding a shawl around them to make them look like a swaddled infant. She wore her blouse loose to hide the thirty-two-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver stuck into the back of her belt. She put the sticks of dynamite under her belt next to the pistol. Over her shoulder she slung a pouch containing a pair of homemade grenades. She draped another shawl around her to cover everything.

She crossed herself and grinned at Antonio. “If I miscalculate…”

“Ka-boom!” Antonio had learned the word when he worked for the American Mining Company.

The Americans laughed when they said “Ka-boom,” but then, they weren't the ones setting the sticks and lighting the fuses down in the tunnels. Antonio had stolen this dynamite from that same mine, so the laugh, he said, was on the gringos.

Angel took a liking to the word “ka-boom” and it became a joke between them when they made bombs or deployed them. Now it didn't seem funny. If Angel's arsenal detonated too soon it would kill everyone on top of the stock car.

Behind the engine and wood tender came the first-class passenger car with the officers. Behind that were three freight cars filled with conscripts who had set up their own camp inside. The mail car rattled along between the last freight car and the stock car that held José and the other prisoners. This train had no caboose.

Before leaving the station Angel had sold tamales to the two soldiers assigned to guard the mail car. She had passed the time of day with them as they sat smoking in the open doorway. Behind them she could see the weapons and ammunition stored with the sacks of mail.

Those same two men were now sitting on top of the car. More soldiers should have been keeping watch up there, but the train was climbing up into the mountains now. No one wanted to be picked off by rebel snipers hiding in the heights. Under orders, guards would climb up top, then sneak back down through the trapdoors in the roofs as soon as their commanding officer settled into his first-class seat.

The men on top of the mail car were there in hopes of seeing the tamale seller named Angelina again. Angel guessed they were deciding which of them would be the first to invite Angelina into the mail car so he could enjoy her. She would have bet that they were also discussing how much they should pay her, and whether they need pay her at all.

Antonio kissed her. “Be careful,
mi Angelita
.”

Angel kissed him back. “
De la muerte y de la suerte, no hay quien seescape.
There's no escaping death and fate.”

Angel put a box of matches and a couple cigars in the pocket her friend Berta had sewed into her skirt. The folk of Berta's village had also agreed to let Angel's people pasture their horses and mules there. They would retrieve them when they finished this job.

Angel started for the front end of the car, stepping around the women and children. She could have tucked up her skirt, taken a running start, and leaped across to the mail car, but that would've alerted the guards that they might be getting more than they were preparing to bargain for.

She climbed down the rungs on the end of the stock car. Grasping the brakeman's handholds, she stepped across the gap with the tracks roaring past in a blur under her feet. Once on top of the mail car, she shrugged her shawl off the shoulder without the pouch of grenades and cocked a hip at a come-hither angle.

In the distance she saw the bulge of rock projecting like a parrot's head and beak. Beyond it was a railroad trestle spanning one of the many deep ravines. If Angel did not time everything perfectly they all would die, and the next charge she led would be through the gates of hell.

She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Her vision narrowed like a camera's aperture, but what she saw had a preternatural clarity. This was how she felt every time she raised her unit's flag and galloped into a battle.

As the two soldiers approached, Angel arched her back as though to relieve an ache. She had seen the women do it often to show off the breasts with which God had blessed and cursed them. In the process she put a hand on the rubber grip of her pistol, just for reassurance.

She would not use the revolver unless she had to. A gunshot wasn't like other sounds. The troops would hear it over the rumble, clatter, and creak of the train. They would come swarming up here.

Angel bantered with the two while she waited for the curve with a drop-off on one side. As it neared, she pulled one of the men close as though to kiss him. She pretended to lose her balance and shouldered him toward the abyss. He fell with his head and chest hanging over the edge of the roof.

When his friend bent to help him, Angel pushed him. She put her bare foot on the first man's backside and shoved as the train went into the curve. The centrifigal force of the turn sent both men flying over the edge of the cliff.

Antonio jumped the gap to join her while Serafina, Socorro, and nine other women and older girls lined up at the near end of the stock car. Angel slid back the trapdoor in the mail car's roof and peered in to make sure no one else occupied it. She lowered herself through it and handed Mauser rifles, full cartridge belts, and bandoleers of stripper-clips up to Antonio. He gave them to Serafina and the others, who buckled on the belts, slung the bandoleers over their shoulders, and passed the rifles to the rest of the women to hold.

Angel's first plan had been to detach the mail car, too. Antonio pointed out that the weight of two cars moving backward downhill might cause them to overshoot the level ground they were aiming for. There would be nothing to stop them from rolling back down into the valley.

When Angel had passed as many rifles, pistols, and cartridge belts through the trapdoor as everyone could carry, Antonio grasped her hands and hauled her out. He left her there and returned to the rear of the mail car to wait for her signal to climb down and separate the two cars.

Angel ran shoeless and light-footed along the roofs until she reached the front of the first-class car. Up ahead loomed the rock shaped like a parrot's head. It marked the site of the next part of her plan and it was speeding toward her.

Angel had thrown a lot of homemade bombs, but she had never handled dynamite. She did not know that what she was about to do was foolish to the point of suicidal. If she had known, she would have done it anyway. As her father's old
mayordomo,
Plinio, always said, no one lives forever.

She did know that each of the three slow fuses allowed a different time before ignition—ten seconds, twenty seconds, thirty seconds. She had to pitch them accurately and in the proper sequence. Accuracy was not a problem for Angel, and Antonio had tied one, two, or three pieces of string around each stick to indicate the order in which to throw them.

Angel struck a match. Turning to one side and hunching her shoulders to shield it from the wind, she lit a cigar. She enjoyed the first few puffs, flexing her knees and rocking in rhythm with the train.

She signaled Antonio to get ready to uncouple the stock car. As the train slowed down on its approach to the longest of the trestle bridges, Angel sucked on the cigar until the tip glowed a deep red. Her first target was the big, mushroom-shaped smokestack. If she missed it, she would have two more chances. Landing the explosive in the stack was the key to the enterprise.

The first stick with the slowest fuse made a perfect arc. It tumbled end over end in tight revolutions, and flew straight and vertical into the stack like sugarcane down a chute. From there it should be able to blow open the boiler.

As the train clattered onto the boards of the trestle Angel lobbed the second stick between the wood tender and the first-class passenger car. It should land on the trestle and go off as the freight cars passed over it. The third one she heaved over the engine and onto the tracks ahead.

She sprinted back along the train's roofs, pausing to light the fuses on the two grenades and drop them into the mail car. Enough ammunition remained down there to make a first-rate show, and she didn't want a front row seat.

She leaped onto the stock car as Antonio uncoupled it. Angel knew the topography of the railbed like the workings of her rifle. The stock car rolled backward down a gentle slope and around a curve. It came to a stop on level ground while three explosions knocked rocks loose to roll down the sides of the canyon. The ground shook, rattling the badly riveted sleepers that held the rails in place. The rails bucked and the stock car vibrated.

“Ka-boom,” Angel murmured. She stood awestruck by a fireworks display like none she had ever witnessed.

Flames shot thirty feet above the outcrop between the train on the trestle and the runaway car. The blasts launched body parts, chunks of metal, splintered logs, and hot water from the boiler. Several drops of blood, blown by the wind, landed on Angel's arm. She wiped them onto her skirt.

She refused to give in to the weakness of remorse. The men who had belonged to those detached arms and legs and heads would have done the same to her. And they would have done it after they had waited patiently in line to rape her.

Antonio jimmied the lock on the stock car door with a crowbar. The women dumped out the dirt and grass and pieces of wood they had stuffed into their satchels and tied up into their shawls to make them look full of personal possessions. They replaced the bogus goods with the small arms and pouches of ammunition. They all buckled on as many cartridge belts and bandoliers as they could carry.

Angel led the exodus off the roof. She and Antonio, José, the prisoners, and their families shouldered the federal army's rifles and ran for cover among the trees and boulders. From there they would walk the three miles to the village where they had left their belongings and animals.