The Underdogs (9 page)

“Tha's what happens when ya know how to read and write!”

The two sighed sadly.

Luis Cervantes and the other men entered to ask when they would be leaving.

“Tomorrow. We're headin' out in the mornin',” Demetrio said without any hesitation.

Quail then proposed that they bring in music from the neighboring town so they could have a farewell dance. His idea was welcomed with much fervor and excitement.

“Well, we may be leavin',” Pancracio exclaimed, and let out a howl. “But at least I'm not leavin' alone this time. I have my love and I'm bringin' 'er with me.”

Demetrio said that he too would very much like to take with him a young lady upon whom he had laid his eyes. But he added that he really did not want his men to leave behind any dark memories, as the Federales always did.

“You won't have to wait long. Everything will be arranged when we come back,” Luis Cervantes whispered to him.

“How's that?” Demetrio asked. “Didn't I hear that you and Camila . . .”

“There is no truth in that, dear leader. She loves you, but she is afraid of you.”

“Really,
curro
?”

“Yes. But I think what you say is very much the case. We must not leave the wrong impression behind. When we return in triumph, everything will be different. Everyone will even be thanking you for this gesture then.”

“Oh,
curro
. You sure are a sharp one!” Demetrio replied, smiling and patting Luis Cervantes on the back.

As nightfall neared, Camila walked down to the river to get water, as usual. Luis Cervantes was walking up the same path from the opposite direction.

Camila felt her heart racing in her chest.

But Luis Cervantes suddenly disappeared around a bend in the path, behind a large boulder, perhaps without even noticing that she was approaching.

As on every other day at that time of the late afternoon, twilight spread its dusky hue over the calcined stones, the sunburned branches, and the dried-out moss. A warm, rustling wind blew softly and swayed the lanceolate leaves in the cornfield. Everything was the same as always. But Camila sensed something different, something strange in the stones, the dry branches, the fragrant air, and the fallen leaves: as if all those things were now suffused with an unusual sadness.

She walked around a gigantic eroded boulder and ran suddenly into Luis Cervantes perched atop a large stone, where he was sitting with his hat off and his legs dangling down.

“Hey,
curro
. At least come on over an' say good-bye to me.”

Obligingly enough, Luis Cervantes got off the rock and joined her.

“Ya're so arrogant! Was I so bad to ya that ya don't even talk to me?”

“Why do you say that to me, Camila? You have been very good to me. Better than a friend, in fact. You have taken care of me like a sister. I leave you very grateful and will always remember what you have done for me.”

“Ya liar!” Camila said, now full of joy. “And if I hadn't said anything to ya just now?”

“I was planning on saying thank you this evening at the dance.”

“What dance? If there's a dance, I'm not goin'.”

“Why are you not going?”

“'Cause I can't stand to look at that mean ol' man . . . at that Demetrio.”

“How silly! Listen, he really loves you, Camila. Do not miss this opportunity, for it shall not come by in your lifetime again. Do not be a fool, Demetrio will be a general before long, he will be very, very rich. He will have many horses, many jewels, very fancy dresses, elegant houses, and plenty of money to spend on anything he wants. Imagine what it would be like to be by his side!”

Camila looked up at the blue sky, trying to hide her eyes from him. Up above, a dry leaf broke from a treetop and drifted slowly down, falling at her feet like a small, dead butterfly. She bent over and grabbed it gently. Then, without looking toward him, she murmured:

“Oh,
curro
. If ya only knew how bad it feels when ya say all those things to me. Ya're the one that I love, don't ya know. You and only you. Go away,
curro
. Go away, I don't know why I get so embarrassed like this. Go away, go away!”

And she quickly crumbled up the leaf in her trembling hand and tossed it away, and then covered her face with her apron.

When she looked up again, Luis Cervantes was nowhere to be seen.

Camila got up and started walking down the path toward the creek again. Now it looked as if the water was sprinkled with fine particles of carmine, as if a sky of colors and sharp peaks of light and valleys of shadows stirred about in its waters. Myriads of luminous insects blinked above a pool near the water's edge. And at the bottom, the reflection just above the smooth, round pebbles reproduced Camila's yellow blouse with its green ribbons, her white skirt, her clean and finely combed hair, and her smooth eyebrows and forehead—exactly as she had prepared herself to please Luis Cervantes.

And she burst into tears again.

In the thicket of rockroses the frogs sang the implacable melancholy of the hour.

Swaying back and forth on a dry branch, a dove cried as well.

XV

There was much merrymaking and a lot of very good mezcal
¹
at the dance.

“I wish Camila was here,” Demetrio said loudly.

Everyone looked around for Camila.

“She's sick, she has a real bad headache,” Señora Agapita said in a harsh voice, irritated by the mean looks she was getting from everyone.

Later, as the fandango was coming to an end, Demetrio, swaying a bit as he spoke, thanked the good neighbors who had given them such generous shelter, and promised that he would keep them all in mind once the revolution triumphed. He concluded with: “Bed and prison, that's where ya always know who your real friends are.”

“May God hold you in his blessed hand,” an old woman said.

“May God bless you and lead you down the righteous path,” a few others said.

And a very drunk María Antonia added:

“May ya come back soon. But real, real soon now!”

The next day, María Antonia who, despite being pock-marked and having a lazy eye, had a very bad reputation— so bad that everyone said there was no man who had not taken a turn with her behind the thicket of rockroses by the riverbanks—yelled at Camila:

“Hey, you! What's this cryin' all about? What're ya doin' in the corner with that shawl wrapped 'round your head? Hey? Don't tell me that ya're cryin' now? Look at your eyes, girl. Ya look like a witch already. Go on. There's nothin' to get all upset about. Ya know there's no pain that ever lasts no more than three days.”

Señora Agapita knit her brows and mumbled something incomprehensible under her breath.

The women were actually quite upset by the departure of Demetrio and his men. Even the men, despite the insults they muttered between their teeth, lamented that they would no longer be eating lamb and sheep for dinner. That had been the life indeed: eating and drinking to their hearts' delight, and sleeping long siestas in the shade of the large boulders with their legs stretched out while the clouds drifted slowly across the sky overhead.

“Look at 'em again. There they go,” María Antonia shouted. “They look like toy soldiers arranged on a cupboard. ”

In the distance, Macías's men could be seen atop the edge of a summit—out where the rugged ground and the chaparral began to merge into a bluish, velvety horizon—cut out against the sky's sapphire radiance. A warm breeze carried the faint, intermittent melody of “La Adelita” back to the huts.

Camila had come out when she had heard María Antonia's voice. Seeing them one last time, she was unable to control herself, and once again broke out in sobs.

María Antonia laughed loudly and walked away.

“Someone has cast the evil eye on my daughter,” murmured Señora Agapita, perplexed.

She thought quietly for a while. Then, after going over it carefully in her mind, she made a decision. She reached up to a spike nailed into a post in her hut, between the image of Christ and one of the Virgin of Jalpa, and grabbed the raw leather strap that her husband used to yoke the oxen. And folding the long strap in half, she gave Camila a thorough thrashing to drive away the evil spirits.

As he rode on his chestnut horse, Demetrio felt rejuvenated. His eyes had recovered their peculiar metallic sparkle, and the red, hot blood was flowing again through his coppery, pure-race indigenous cheeks.

The men all filled their lungs deeply, as if they were trying to breathe in the vast horizon, the immensity of the sky, the blueness of the mountains, and the fresh air infused with the sweet fragrances of the Sierra. They galloped on their horses as if they could thus take possession of all the land with their unrestrained running. Who among them thought then of the severe chief of police, of the grumbling gendarme, or of the pompous cacique? Who then thought any more of their wretched shack of a house, where one lives like a slave, always under the watch of the owner or of the surly, cruel majordomo? Who among them thought at that point of always having to be up before sunrise, with shovel and basket in hand, or lugging plow and goad, ready to go out and earn one's daily serving of atole and frijoles?

They sang, they laughed, and they hooted, drunk with the sun, the air, and life itself.

The Indian pranced forward on his horse; flashing his white teeth, he told jokes and acted like a clown.

“Listen, Pancracio,” he asked very seriously. “In a letter I got here my wife has notified me that we have another child now. How can that be? I haven't seen her since the days of Señor Madero!”

“Nah, tha's nothin'. When ya left 'er the bun was already in the oven!”

Everyone bursts out in loud laughter. Everyone except the Indian, who starts singing in a falsetto voice, grave and aloof and horribly off-key:

The clamoring finally ceased when the sun began to beat down on them.

All day long they rode along the canyon. All day long they climbed up and down sloping hills, dirty, cropped hills like scabbed heads, hills always endlessly followed by more hills.

In the late afternoon, they made out the vague outline of several tall church towers against the blue-ridged mountains in the distance, and beyond this, a road with swirling white dust and gray telegraph poles.

They headed toward the main road, where they saw the shape of a man sitting on his haunches off to one side. They approached him. He was a ragged, ugly-looking old man working hard as he tried to repair a leather sandal with a dull knife. Near him grazed a donkey loaded with a bale of hay.

Demetrio asked: “What're ya doin' here, gramps?”

“I'm headin' to town, bringin' alfalfa for my cow.”

“How many Federales in town?”

“Yup . . . there's a few, I think no more than a dozen.”

The old man started talking. He spoke of very grave rumors. That Obregón was already laying siege to Guadalajara; that Carrera Torres had taken San Luis Potosí; and that Pánfilo Natera was in Fresnillo.
²

“Well then,” Demetrio said. “You can go on 'head and head back into town. But ya better be careful and not tell no one who ya just saw out here, 'cause if ya do I'll blow your brains out myself. I'll find you even if ya go and hide in the center of the earth.”

“What d'ya say, muchachos?” Demetrio inquired after the old man had left.

“Let's go get 'em! Let's go kill every single one of those conservative mongrels!” Demetrio's men exclaimed.

They counted the cartridges and the hand grenades that Owl
³
had built with fragments of iron pipes and brass knobs.

“It's not much,” Anastasio observed. “But we'll trade 'em in for real rifles soon 'nough.”

They pressed forward anxiously, spurring the thin flanks of their fatigued nags.

But Demetrio's imperious voice stopped them. Following their leader's orders, they made camp at the foothill of a rise, protected by a thick growth of huisache trees. Without unsaddling their horses, every man sought a rock to lay his head.

XVI

Demetrio Macías gave the marching orders at midnight.

The town was one or two leagues away. They were going to strike the Federales at dawn. The sky was clouded over and only a handful of stars shone above, but occasionally there was a reddish flash of lightning that lit up the entire night.

Luis Cervantes asked Demetrio if it might not behoove them—so as to be even more successful in their attack—to find a guide, or at the very least to gather the town's topographic details and the precise situation of the barracks of the Federales.

“No,
curro,
” Demetrio replied, smiling with a disdainful expression. “We hit 'em when they least expect it, and tha's that. Tha's how we've always done it, many times before, and it's how we'll always do it. Ever seen how squirrels stick their heads outta their holes if ya fill 'em up with water? Well, these damned little conservative mongrels will come out just as stunned when they hear the first shots. They'll come out, and we'll be there ready to use their heads as target practice.”