TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (20 page)

The new Villista lieutenant in charge of the hospital guard presented himself, and I recognized him. He was Juan Dozal, who had helped Fierro execute the men at Casas Grandes. Somewhere along the route to Torreón he had received a promotion.

Dozal, weak-chinned and mustachioed, eager to please, told us that a dozen of the prisoners were already dead and had been dumped outside in the hospital gardens. It was a hot afternoon, and we could smell them. During the night some of the Redflaggers had attacked the Federal enlisted men, trying to strip them of their uniforms. Men had been battered to bloody unconsciousness, even death, for the sake of their soiled white shirts and peaked caps. Many of the Redflaggers had torn their uniforms to shreds and thrown them away, so that they were naked. The Federal officers, understanding their special peril, had ripped off their insignia; but if you looked closely you could see the tiny pinholes on their shoulders. A man’s life literally depended on the way he was dressed.

“My colonel,” Dozal said to Fierro, “if you’ve got to pick out the right men to die, you’re going to have a difficult time.”

“I don’t think so,” Rodolfo said goodnaturedly, surveying the writhing mass of men. “Let’s not tax our brains too much. Those who are dressed as Federals will be spared—unless, of course, they refuse to join us. But it looks as if most of them have fought hard for the privilege.”

“And if they’re naked, my colonel?”

“If a man’s naked, we’ll shoot him. We’ll assume he’s a Redflagger or an officer. We may make a few mistakes that way, but they won’t be the sort of mistakes we can live to regret.”

They screamed with terror—kicked, shoved and spat—when Fierro approached. They knew who he was. He took over the operation, did the picking and sorting, while Hipólito smoked a cigar and I kept count in a schoolboy’s black notebook. I still have the notebook, stained with blood and weather. This is what it tells me.

Dead already: ……12

Federal soldiers who chose to join us: ……253

Federal soldiers who said no: ……3

Federal officers: ……17

Redflaggers: ……64

Men of unknown description: ……155

Total: ……504

The three Federal soldiers who chose not to join us had lost their wits during the night’s scuffle and were incapable of understanding Fierro’s polite question: “Will you fight for General Francisco Villa and swear allegiance to the sacred memory of President Madero?”

Two hundred fifty-three men swore on the lives of their mothers and children and the blood of Christ, and they would have signed a contract with their own blood if they had been asked. A squad of men led them off toward town. Their cheers of
“Viva Villa!
“ faded slowly away.

The last four categories on my list, a total of two hundred thirty-nine men, were herded outside by Juan Dozal’s soldiers into the stockyards. By then it was late afternoon, growing chilly. The penetrating wind of the high plateau had begun to blow. The sun skimmed the tops of the gaunt mountains to the west. We walked slowly through the hospital gardens to the edge of the corrals, where Fierro surveyed the terrain for five minutes without saying a word. Occasionally he grunted deep in his throat as his plan for the execution took shape. He had thrown a dark serape over his shoulders to ward off the wind.

The wind of La Laguna was fabled in song; the people liked to say that it couldn’t blow out a candle, but it could kill a man. Today the wind would not have to work alone.

Dozal and his squad of soldiers had only their thin jackets, and they were cold. They moved about restlessly, rifles pointed at the prisoners, while Fierro stood like a tall statue, vigorous legs planted wide on the earth.

“My colonel,” Dozal asked, “what are your orders for us?”

Fierro seemed to waken from a dream, and he turned to measure Dozal. “Do you have a good supply of bullets?”

“We have plenty.”

“For rifle or pistol?”

“Both.”

He draped an arm over Dozal’s shoulder and walked with him to the wooden fence, topped with barbed wire, that shut in the condemned men. The two were beyond earshot. Hipólito and I and the other men stood shivering, while Fierro and Dozal began a long discussion. I could see Rodolfo pointing in various directions, and Dozal kept wagging his head. The stockyards were empty of cattle. The prisoners, some wearing ragged uniforms, most naked or nearly so, sat on their haunches in the pen nearest us. They were the most pitiful lot of human beings I had ever seen. But most seemed to have accepted their fate. Their screams and mewling had given way to stunned silence. And they were very cold.

The pen led through a narrow cattle chute to a second similar enclosure, and then the same sort of chute led to yet a third pen, somewhat larger. Beyond that lay open plain dotted with cactus and a few adobe huts, and then the looming brown bulk of the mountains. There were some adobe walls too, and a well with an iron bucket that clanked monotonously against a forked post, and adjoining the third and final pen was a small house that must have served as the office for the stockyards. The sweet smell of cattle dung came to my nostrils with the gathering wind.

Suddenly one of the prisoners stepped boldly across the dirt yard to where Hipólito and I leaned against the fence. He was a haggard but well-set-up man of about thirty, with pale skin and dark, intelligent eyes. He wore the torn uniform of a Redflagger, so he surprised me by speaking in an oddly accented but fluent English.

“Colonel,” he said, “I can see that you’re an American. Is that not so? Yes, surely it is. You’re a volunteer in the revolutionary cause. I request the privilege of a word with you. My name is Miguel Bosques, if you please. I am a schoolteacher.”

A little startled, I said, “I’m not a colonel, Señor Bosques. Just a captain. And there’s nothing I can do for you.”

“That’s not so, Captain. You can do me the honor of listening to what I have to say. Surely, under these ghastly circumstances, that’s not too much to ask from one human being to another.”

“All right,” I muttered uneasily.

Beside me, Hipólito cocked an ear. The man spoke with dignity, but I sensed that he was about to plead for his life. I kept shifting my weight from one foot to another.

“My name is Miguel Bosques, as I have said, and I am a schoolteacher. I taught the English language in Gómez Palacio in a small private school for the children of the wealthy. I spent much of my youth in Tampico, which you may know is eastward in the state of Tamaulipas, and there my father labored for Lord Cowdray’s Eagle Oil Company of London, England. This accounts for my small command of your language. I apologize for any insufficiency.”

“You speak it fine,” I murmured.

“Thank you. You are kind. I wish to say this, sir. You see I wear the uniform of a volunteer in the Redflag army of General Orozco, who is the enemy of General Villa. I wish to say that I do not wear this uniform by choice, but rather by force and lack of alternative. I am not a political man, although I am most assuredly an attentive student of Mexican politics. Perhaps that explains why I am not a political man.” He smiled a little—a remarkable feat, I thought, under the circumstances. “I am, actually, a poet, although I have not yet been honored by publishing of the little I have written.”

Oblivious to my discomfort, he told me his story.

It seems that Huerta and Orozco were running short of men to fight the growing threat of Villa’s Northern Division. There weren’t enough volunteers, so they had organized press gangs in all the major cities. In Mexico City, Bosques related, they had seized seven hundred men who were at a bullfight and marched them off under guard to the Chapultepec Barracks. Others had been taken from their homes and jobs, if the jobs were menial enough.

Bosques and his two younger brothers, one a bank clerk, the other a printer, had been standing in the streets of Torreón one night about three weeks ago, watching a fire that was destroying a movie theater. Naturally, a big crowd gathered. The army moved in and asked the women and children to withdraw first, for there was danger of the building collapsing. The several hundred men left were then cordoned off with ropes and told by an officer that if they had nothing better to do than stand around and watch their city burn to the ground, they might as well be of some use and fight for its survival. Two men tried to run. They were shot on the spot. A few doctors and lawyers lodged furious protests. They were excused.

But when Bosques told the officers he was a schoolteacher, one of them said, “Good. You can teach your new comrades that to disobey orders is punishable by death.” And they were driven off in trucks to the barracks in La Cruz, where they were issued torn uniforms and rifles without bullets.

“We were not given bullets until four days ago,” Bosques said, “when it was known that General Villa was intending his march on Torreón. I did not fire a shot until the attack in actuality began. … Then I fired into the air. It was my wish to cause harm to no man. I could not do that, sir. My brother Roberto was killed in Gómez Palacio, not a hundred yards from where he had lived with his family. My other brother, Isidoro, is a prisoner here tonight as well. He is married, and his wife is expecting to give birth. I, fortunately, one might say in these circumstances, am a widower. As soon as opportunity presented itself—I speak now of the battle for Gómez Palacio—I laid down my arms and surrendered. And now I ask you, Captain, not meaning to impose too much on your time, if it is justice that I and my brother should die here in a cattle pen, when I am a schoolteacher and poet, and he is a printer of words, and we are the enemy of no man.”

Quickly I glanced at Hipólito. His face gave nothing away—this Miguel Bosques hadn’t appealed to
him.
I shivered, for it had struck right into my innards when he said he had fired into the air and hadn’t wanted to kill any man.

“Hang on a minute.” I spoke a little more roughly to Bosques than I felt.

Then I took Hipólito aside. “Did you understand?”

“Most of it. He uses large words, that fellow.”

“What do you think?”

“I think this is a shitty war, Tomás.”

“What can we do?”

“When Pancho and I were bandits, we killed a man only if he wouldn’t part with his silver or his supplies, or if he fought back. We killed the
rurales,
but they were pigs. Now I’m a revolutionist. We kill peasants and schoolteachers.” Hipólito hawked and spat into the dirt, in the same way that his brother spat on the carpet of the Hotel Salvador.

“Could you shoot this schoolteacher?”

“Rodolfo will take care of that. He’s in charge. I’ll just smoke a cigar.” He fumbled in the pocket of his suit. “Do you want one, Tomás? They’re good for your nerves.”

“I’m going to talk to Rodolfo.”

“What for?”

“Because I have to.”

He was still with Dozal, issuing orders. A case of cartridges lay on the ground at his feet, with two extra pistols, the wind swirling the dust around his leather puttees. I excused myself for interrupting. In Fierro’s presence, politeness seemed to come naturally, and I had an even better reason.

“Rodolfo, one of the prisoners spoke to me.”

“Ah? About what? Does he have information?”

“He has a tale to tell.”

I repeated Bosques’ story. Fierro listened with great attentiveness, never coughing or scratching his jaw, as if I were telling him the most fascinating thing he had ever heard.

I finished by saying, “I don’t think this man deserves to die.” And then, more lamely, “If we allow him to live, he could be useful to us.”

Fierro grunted, put a hand on my shoulder and smiled at me. The weight of his hand felt like a ton, but he wasn’t pressing.

“Tomás, I’m going to tell you exactly what our chief would tell you if he were standing here.” His voice was as smooth and as icy as his smile, the resonant tone of a man whose destiny is unquestioned. “If you talked to all these prisoners, every single one would tell you he was conscripted against his will. Every one of them would tell you he was a schoolteacher, or a poet, and you’d probably find enough medical students to cure an epidemic of cholera. Every one of them would tell you he only fired his rifle into the air. Every one of them would talk eloquently of justice. Aren’t they human? Wouldn’t you do the same?” He didn’t pause for an answer; his brown eyes were clear and certain. “And remember this too, Tomás. This man, this so-called schoolteacher, has begged for his life. But you can never save a man’s life. You can only postpone his death. Isn’t that so?”

This time he waited for my reply.

“Maybe,” I said, “but that’s not the point. He wants that postponement.”

“He’s a fool.” And then for the first time, although there was to be one more, Fierro revealed his mind—his heart, if he had one—to me. Even his eyes changed, growing cloudy. He seemed to be talking to himself more than to any listener. “After all,” he said quietly, “death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a man. It’s a reasonable answer to a generally unsatisfactory life. We Mexicans know that, and so we don’t fear it. Naturally, from instinct, as this schoolteacher illustrates, we try to avoid it … but when the moment comes, we know how to face it. When my time comes, I ask only one thing—that it be quick. Then must come a long sleep, without care or memory. I pray for that. That can’t be bad, can it?” He waited again.

“No,” I said, through clenched teeth.

The cloud vanished from his eyes.

“In any case,” he said calmly, “the man is lying. You’re young. He guessed correctly that you would be impressionable. Go to him. Tell him that he was absolutely correct in asking for justice, and he shall receive it. He shall have revolutionary justice. And then report back to me. I’m going to need your help.”

There seemed no way to argue. Fierro was in command, not I, and his decision was clearly unbending. My leg ached and I still felt weak; I was glad to get away from him. I passed by Hipólito, who was smoking his cigar and leaning against the knotted fence, apparently unconcerned. He had known the outcome in advance.

Miguel Bosques, however, awaited me with a look that made me cringe inwardly. The man had dared to hope. It showed in the gleam of his eyes and the way his knuckles whitened as he gripped the fence rail. Compassion might have made him buckle, and I couldn’t bear to face more pleas.