The Underdogs (8 page)

Camila felt a welling up in her chest, rising to her throat, nearly choking her. She pressed her fists hard against her squinting eyes to stop the tears starting to flow from them. Then she wiped the moisture away from her cheeks with the back of her hand and ran away as quickly as a musk deer, just as she had done three days ago.

XII

Demetrio's wound was healed. They were starting to discuss their plans for heading north, where it was said that the revolutionaries had triumphed against the Federales everywhere along the line. Then an event occurred that sped things along. One cool afternoon Luis Cervantes was sitting on a peak overlooking the Sierra, gazing out into the distance, daydreaming, bored, killing time. At the foot of the narrow summit, Pancracio and Lard were playing cards, sitting like lizards between a thicket of rockroses and the banks of the river. Anastasio Montañés was watching the game without much interest, when all of a sudden he turned his black-bearded face and his sweet eyes toward Luis Cervantes, and said:

“Why are you so sad,
curro
? What're you thinkin' so much about? Come over 'ere, move closer, let's talk.”

Luis Cervantes did not move. But Anastasio went over and sat next to him in a friendly manner.

“You miss all the sound and excitement of your city, don't ya? I can tell you're one of those fancy shoes and bow-tie kinda men. Look,
curro,
see the way I am here, all dirty and wearin' these torn rags for clothes? Well, I'm not what I seem to be. You don't believe me? Well, I don't have no needs. I own ten yokes of oxen back home. Really, I do! You can go ask my compadre Demetrio. I harvested my ten acres last year. You don't believe me? Look,
curro,
I really like fighting the Federales, and tha's why they hate me so much. Last time, eight months ago already (which is the same amount of time that I've been wanderin' 'round here), I stabbed me a little fascist captain (God help me), right here, smack in the middle of his gut. But, really, I don't have no needs. I'm out 'ere 'cause of that. And so I can give a hand to my compadre Demetrio.”

“Oh, sweet beauty of my life!” Lard shouted out excitedly after drawing a card, and put down a twenty-cent silver coin on the ace of spades.

“So ya think I'm not much for gamblin',
curro
! Wanna bet somethin'? Come on. Check this out. This leather snake has a little rattle left to it!” Anastasio said, shaking his belt and making the silver coins in it ring out.

Pancracio flipped over the next card, another ace came up, and a dispute broke out. Accusations, shouts, then insults. Pancracio turned his stony face toward Lard, who glared back with his serpent eyes and began to shake as if he were having an epileptic fit. They were one move away from coming to blows. Their own verbal barbs being insufficiently sharp, they added the naming of their fathers and mothers to the mix in the richest embroidering of indecencies.

But nothing came of it. After the insults ran their course, the game was called off; they placed an arm around each other's shoulders peacefully and walked off together to drink some aguardiente.
¹

“I don't like gettin' into these fights with my tongue, either. It's ugly, isn't it,
curro
? Really, no one has ever gone and insulted my family. I like to make sure that I'm respected. That's why you'll never see me goin' 'round mockin' no one. Listen,
curro,
” Anastasio said, suddenly interrupting himself. He stood up, put his hand above his eyes, and added: “What's that cloud of dust rising over there, behind that small hill? Hell! Here come the conservative mongrels! And here we are, completely unprepared! Come on,
curro,
let's go tell the muchachos.”

Their news was met with great cheer.

“Let's go get 'em!” Pancracio was the first to exclaim.

“Yes, let's go get 'em. What can they have that we don't!”

But the enemy turned out to be a small herd of burros and two muleteers.

“Stop 'em anyway. They're highlanders and must have some news,” Demetrio said.

And was the news they brought ever amazing! The Federales had fortified El Grillo and La Bufa, the hills surrounding Zacatecas.
²
It was said that this was Huerta's last stand, and everyone predicted that the plaza would soon fall. All the families were running away as quickly as they could, heading south. The trains were overflowing with people. And since there were not enough carriages and carts on the main roads, many had panicked and were fleeing on foot, even lugging their possessions on their backs. The revolutionary leader Pánfilo Natera
³
was said to be gathering his people in Fresnillo, near the city of Zacatecas, and everyone was saying that the Federales were already “wearing pants that were getting too big for them.”

“The fall of Zacatecas will be Huerta's
Requiescat in pace,
” Luis Cervantes assured with extraordinary ardor. “We must get there and join the ranks of General Natera before the attack.”

Noticing the wonderment that his words produced on the faces of Demetrio and his comrades, Cervantes realized that he was still a mister nobody with the group.

The next day, however, when the men headed out to look for good mounts for their march, Demetrio called Luis Cervantes and said to him:

“So you really wanna come with us,
curro
? You're water of a different river than we are, and honestly, I can't understand how ya can like this life. D'ya think that we're wanderin' around out here 'cause we like it? It's true, we enjoy all the noise and excitement, why deny it, but it's not just that. Sit down,
curro,
sit down, let me tell ya all about it. D'ya know why I rose up in rebellion? Listen up, I'll tell ya. Before the revolution, I even had my own little corner of land to sow, and if it hadn't been for the run-in that I had with Don Mónico, the cacique of Moyahua, d'ya know what I'd be doin' right now? I'd be rushin' about, preparin' my team of oxen to sow my land. Pancracio, go get us two bottles of beer, one for me and one for the
curro
here. For heaven's sakes. A little drink won't hurt me no more now, will it?”

XIII

“I'm from Limón, a place very close to Moyahua, right in the middle of the Juchipila canyon. I had my house, my cows, and a small piece of land to sow. In other words, I had everythin' I needed. Well, señor, us rancheros we have this custom where we go into town once a week. Ya hear mass, ya listen to the sermon, then ya go to the plaza, buy your onions, your tomatoes, and everything else ya might need. Then you go to Primitivo López's tavern to take a break from things. Ya have a little drink, sometimes more than one, sometimes ya have a bit too much, and then the drink goes to your head, and ya have ya a good ol' time, and ya laugh, and ya shout and sing even, if ya bloody well feel like it. Everything's good and no one's doin' no one any harm.

“But then they start to bother ya, the policeman keeps comin' by, walkin' to and fro, peekin' in through the door, and the chief of police or the deputies decide to ruin your day. Needless to say, compadre, ya don't have ice water in your veins, ya're made outta flesh and bones, and ya have a soul, after all, ya start to get angry, ya stand up for yourself and say your piece! If they get what ya're sayin', all's well and good, they let ya be, and that's the end of it. But sometimes they go and talk all tough and start hittin', and ya're pretty hotheaded as it is, and ya don't appreciate it none when someone tries to show ya up. And, yes señor, before ya know it, the knife comes out, or ya draw your gun. And then ya're off and running all through the Sierra till they forget all about that poor li'l corpse of theirs!

“Well, what happened with Don Mónico then, ya ask? He was a damn ol' fool, but not so foolish with me. What happened to him is much less than what happened to many others, I can tell ya that. I spit on his beard 'cause he wouldn't mind his own business, and tha's that, there's nothin' else to tell. After that he had just about all the federation come down on me. Ya must know the story of what happened in Mexico City, the one about how they killed Señor Madero and some other man, Félix or Felipe Díaz or somethin' like that?
¹
Well, this Don Mónico goes personally to Zacatecas to bring back a whole army squadron to arrest me. Sayin' that I was a Maderista
²
and that I was about to rise up and join the revolution.
³
But since I have plenty of friends, someone came to tell me in time, and when the Federales came to Limón, I had already run off. Then my compadre Anastasio joined me, since he had killed someone, an' then Pancracio, Quail, and many more friends an' other men I didn't even know at that point. After that more an' more men have joined us, an' now here we are, as you see us. We go along fightin' as best as we can.”

“Dear leader,” Luis Cervantes said after a few minutes of silence and reflection. “As you already know, Natera's men are gathered near here, in Juchipila. It behooves us to go and join them before they take Zacatecas. We should present ourselves before the general and—”

“I have no talent for that kind of thing. I don't like to bow down to no one.”

“But if you stay out here alone, with just a handful of men, you will never be more than a small-time rebel leader. The revolution will triumph, that is for certain. And once it is over, they will say to you the same thing that they said to those who helped Madero.
⁴
They will say: ‘Friends, thank you very much. Now ya can go back home—'”

“But I don't want nothin' other than that. I just want 'em to leave me in peace so I can go back home.”

“Yes, yes, I'm getting to that. I haven't finished yet. For his part, Madero said, ‘You have helped carry me to the presidency of the republic. You have risked your lives, with the imminent danger of leaving widows and orphans behind in misery. And now that I have achieved my goal, go on back to your picks and shovels, go on back to your daily struggles, always hungry and half-naked, as you were before. Meanwhile, those of us up here will go ahead and make a few million pesos for ourselves.'”

Demetrio shook his head, smiled, and scratched himself.

“Luisito has spoken the God's honest truth!” the barber Venancio exclaimed enthusiastically.

“As I was saying,” Luis Cervantes continued. “Once the revolution comes to an end, everything will come to an end. And what a pity it will be for all those lives cut short, for all those widows and orphans, for all that spilled blood! All of that and for what? So that a handful of indolent rogues can grow rich, while everything else remains the same as before, or even worse? Since you are unselfish, you say: ‘I have no ambition other than to return to my land.' But is it just to deprive your wife and children of the fortune that divine providence now lays in your hands? Would it be just to abandon your country now, at these solemn times, precisely when the motherland will need all the selflessness of its most humble children to save her, so she will not fall again into the hands of the caciques, those eternal thieves and murderers? We must not forget the most sacred things a man has in this world: his family and his country!”

Macías smiled. His eyes sparkled.

“So . . . So ya think it would be good to go and join Natera,
curro
?”

“Not only good,” Venancio exclaimed, trying to sound persuasive. “But indispensable, Demetrio.”

“Esteemed leader,” Cervantes continued, “ever since we met, you and I have gotten along very well, and I have grown to care for you more and more as I have come to know how valuable you are to the revolution. Allow me now to be entirely frank. I believe that you do not yet understand your true, your high, your most noble mission. You are a modest man, without any ambition. You have not yet opened your eyes and seen the very important role that you are to play in this revolution. You are not really out here just because of the cacique don Mónico. You have risen up against the cacique system itself, the system that is devastating the entire nation. We are constitutive pieces of a great social movement that will lead to the exaltation of our motherland. We are instruments of destiny for the revindication of the sacred rights of the people. We are not fighting in order to defeat one miserable murderer. We are fighting a fight against tyranny itself. And that is what it means to fight for one's principles, to have ideals. That is what Villa, Natera, and Carranza are fighting for.
⁵
And that is what we are fighting for.”

“Yes, yes. Exactly what I was thinking,” Venancio said, nearly beside himself.

“Pancracio, go on, bring us two more beers.”

XIV

“If ya could see how good the
curro
explains things, compadre Anastasio,” Demetrio said, reflecting on what he had been able to discern from Luis Cervantes's words that morning.

“Yes, I heard 'im,” Anastasio replied. “Truth is, he's one of those who understands things good, since he knows how to read and write. But the thing that I don't really get, compadre, is how we're supposed to go and present ourselves to Señor Natera since there's so few of us.”

“H'm, that's the least of it! From now on we're gonna do things a little different. I heard tell how Crispín Robles goes into every town he finds, takes all the weapons and horses they have there, lets all the prisoners outta the jail, and just like that he has more than enough men with 'im. You'll see. Truth is, compadre Anastasio, that we've wasted a lot of time already. Seems hard to believe that we needed this
curro
to show up and lecture us just to get us to wake up and see what's what.”