TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA: A Novel of Mexico and the Texas border (27 page)

“Teo, do you want me to bring out the child for Captain Mix?”

Teo! I realized that had to be a private nickname for Doroteo, the name he had been born with in Durango, where as a youth he had sold wood from the back of a burro. I think if a man ever called him that, Villa wouldn’t bother to yell for Rodolfo Fierro, He would just shoot him on the spot.

“Where’s my
angelito?”
Villa called, grinning.

Out came his little angel, dressed neatly in a navy blue cotton skirt and white blouse. She must have been about three, a pretty child who looked like her mother, which was lucky. She didn’t have much to say, and after she buried her curly head in her father’s chest and he bussed her all over her cheeks and ears, so that she giggled and whispered, “It tickles, Papa,” she went dutifully to her mother, who patted everything back into place and then sent her off to play.

Pancho Villa—the Lion of the North, the conqueror of Juárez— smiled his half-idiotic, pop-eyed smile. He might have been an accountant come home for lunch after a busy morning at the office. I was privy to a domesticity that I wouldn’t have thought possible, and if anyone else had described this scene I would have guffawed.

When lunch was over, Luz Corral clapped her hands and said serenely, “I have a present for you, Teo.”

A cunning smile spread over Villa’s features, and he winked at me. He said, “The last present she tried to give me, Tomás, was a knife in my belly.”

“Ah, well!” Luz tapped her spoon on the tablecloth. “You know why,”

“Because of Esperanza…”

“Is that the one from Ascensión or the one from Torreón?”

“Ascensión. The one from Torreón is called Juana.”

“I did make a mistake. I should have put the knife in
their
bellies.”

“They’re not to blame,
chulita.
They only do what they think is right for them. I lie to them, and they believe it. Why don’t you have them live here with you? The older one, Esperanza, sews very well.”

“I have a seamstress already. You haven’t met her, because she’s too pretty. What does the other one do besides look at you adoringly, and the other thing?”

“Not much,” Villa admitted, and looked uncomfortable. “Where is my present?”

Luz swept out of the patio, trailing her long skirts like a young queen.

Villa bent quickly toward me.

“That went well. Naturally I brought it up on purpose, because she would have done so sooner or later, and this way it was easier. I’m glad you were here, Tomás. She doesn’t like to make scenes in front of my officers. What do you think of my
güera?”

“She’s a remarkable woman, chief.”

“I think so too. She won’t like it when I send her away to Texas. But I’m going to rent a fine house for her and buy her a Dodge car. She wants to learn to drive. Can you imagine? A woman! But why shouldn’t she?”

Luz Corral returned with something wrapped in tissue paper, and when she deftly peeled the paper aside it uncovered a tan pith helmet, the kind you see on African explorers going up the Nile after crocodiles. “What the hell is
that?”
Villa demanded.

“If you can’t see what it is, I’ll give you spectacles as a present.” Luz frowned.

“I have a hat,” he said grumpily.

“A dirty sombrero. This is something special—I had Hipólito send it from El Paso, and before that it came all the way from Abercrombie & Fitch in New York. This is the kind of helmet that Colonel Roosevelt wore before he became President. He wore it at the battle of San Juan Hill. It will keep your head cool in the desert.”

“Roosevelt wore one? Did he really?”

“I’ve seen photographs.”

Villa set it slowly on top of his head, and it fit well. With his curly mustache he looked like pictures I had seen of Englishmen in India, except that his cheeks were too brown.

“Will you wear it?” Luz asked him.

“Yes.”

“Do you promise?”

“I’ll wear it.”

“Captain, you heard him promise. Tell me if he doesn’t wear it.”

We pushed our chairs deeper into the shade of the lemon tree. Luz Corral went away, and Villa turned the pith helmet over and over in his hands, as if it might bite. Luz returned with three small glasses and a bottle of Spanish anisette.

“Do you like anisette, Captain, or would you rather have whiskey?”

“Señora, I’ve never had anisette.”

“It tastes of licorice. It’s strong, but excellent for the digestion.”

Villa was going to drink too. When I realized that, I was startled. He caught my eye and winked again. Then he drained his glass in one swallow, coughed, turned slightly red, but quickly recovered himself.

I drank the anisette and it was nicely warming in the belly, and then Luz Corral disappeared again, skirts trailing on the cobbles.

“Say nothing to anyone about this,” Villa commanded, indicating the empty glass. “It helps me to fuck her, which I intend to do now that lunch is over. It’s been very helpful having you here, Tomás. When she gets back, make some excuse and leave. Tell Lopez to come back at seven o’clock sharp and say that I’m urgently wanted by one of my generals. Have you got that?”

“Yes, chief.”

“She’s a remarkable woman. That’s the word. I love her as much as I did on the day I first set eyes on her. Who else would give me a hat like this to wear in battle?”

“I can’t imagine.”

“If I had my life to live over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. Not many men can make that statement. This anisette goes straight to my balls. It makes my head swim.” He patted his stomach. “You know, I was crazy when I was younger. Luz helped calm me down. For that alone. I love her. A wife is essential in a man’s life, like an anchor for a boat. You can keep it coiled on the deck and throw it out whenever you find yourself drifting. Do you know that I’ve never seen the ocean? Not even the Gulf of Mexico. But someday I will.”

He belched. His voice was lazy, his eyelids drooping, although the eyes themselves showed a certain impish sparkle. “Go now, Tomás … she may be a while. She’s probably primping and getting ready for what she hopes will happen. And it will! I’ll make some excuse for you. Seven o’clock sharp—have you got that?”

“I’ve got it.”

Lopez drove me back to the Fermont, and I gave him his instructions.

A few minutes before seven I looked out of my window to spot the Packard pulling away from the curb, on its way to rescue the commanding general of the Northern Division from the arms of his adoring wife.

“Shall I be frightened

when a madman stares?”

On a softly warm January day of 1914, I met the train that brought Pancho Villa north for his historic meeting with Generals Scott and Pershing.

We rode on horseback to the center of the new International Bridge between Juárez and El Paso. Villa dismounted, and General Hugh Scott, the commander at Fort Bliss, shook his hand firmly. Scott wore yellow gloves because two fingers of his right hand were missing; he was a thick-bodied Indian fighter with a white mustache and a face that resembled a walrus, and he massacred the Spanish language with the same vigor that he had applied to the Apache nation.

Black Jack Pershing, the general who commanded the whole border area, hung back a little and was less hearty in his welcome, although he was always correct—a tall, graying, rawboned man in his fifties with squared-off shoulders and a steel ruler sewn into his shirt where his spine should have been. Both Americans and their gang of officers looked slick as paint, and the chief had spruced up for the occasion too, wearing a dark bow tie and a new butterscotch-colored tweed suit that almost fit.

Obregón was also there—come over from Sonora as a military representative of Carranza—a short, barrel-chested man with penetrating green eyes, whose family had emigrated from Ireland a few generations ago and changed the surname from O’Brien. He wore a rumpled white-duck uniform, and he needed a shave. He had been doing well lately, winning several battles against superior Federal forces, so that he and Villa outdid each other to be friendly.

“I bring you the compliments of the First Chief,
compañero,
and we both congratulate you on your great victories in Chihuahua.”

“Ah,
compañerito
“—Villa used the diminutive, for Obregón was a head shorter—”I accept your compliments and congratulate you on
your
victories in Sonora.”

Once this eloquent and momentous speechmaking on the bridge was over, the Americans took everybody to Fort Bliss in a caravan of automobiles, Old Glory and the Mexican flag whipping together in the breeze. In the open Dodge staff car the generals discussed horses and saddles, including the new McClellan saddle the American army had just adapted from the Hungarian cavalry, and with Obregón keeping fairly silent—he was an infantry general, a believer in trench warfare rather than cavalry charges—the others were like three big kids talking about their favorite toys.

Pershing spun a couple of yarns about fighting with Teddy Roosevelt in Puerto Rico and then campaigning against the Moros in the Philippines, and Villa’s eyes grew wide and respectful, because the man was modest and yet knew what he was talking about.

Scott translated and I kept quiet; I was just thrilled to be in such august company. They talked of the impending war in Europe, and Pershing spoke forcefully. “We’ll be in it with the French. The English too. No doubt at all, no matter what Mr. Wilson says.”

At Fort Bliss, Scott had organized a military parade of his troops. We all sat in a wooden grandstand to watch. The American cavalry did look smart on their Oklahoma-bred saddle horses, and they performed some crisp maneuvers. Scott wheeled out his light artillery and had them pop away at targets on the desert. They hit them all.

“Señores,” Villa said sincerely, “I’m glad we will never have to fight you.”

We all laughed politely at these words, and we would all have reason to remember them.

Afterwards we watched a few innings of a baseball game between two of the cavalry battalions. Pershing tried to explain what was going on, but Villa quickly became bored.

Scott seized the opportunity. “General Villa,” he asked, “have you read the pamphlet I sent you? The Rules of War of the Hague Conference?”

Villa said, “I’m going to have it translated and distributed to my soldiers.”

“You’ll abide by it?” Scott asked, pleased.

“I don’t want to lie to you, General Scott. I’ve studied it, and my officers will be ordered to read it … if they can read. But you must admit it’s a pretty funny book. We both know that war isn’t a game. It’s savage and disgusting, even though it sometimes brings out the best in a man. If I’m in a cantina and a fellow pulls a knife on me, as happened in my youth, I’m going to shoot him. I’m not going to dig around in my pocket for a little book that tells me the correct way to do it. Would you, señor?”

Scott didn’t smile. “To what do you object, General?”

“For one thing, the rules say you can’t use soft-nosed lead bullets, because they spread. That makes no sense to me. They do the job.”

The American general tried to argue, but Villa suddenly turned to Pershing and began asking why the men on the bases didn’t simply run to home plate if that was the object of the game, and Pershing, who loved baseball, replied at length and asked Scott to translate.

The rules of war were not discussed again.

Then we were all taken to Scott’s house in the foothills behind the post for tea and cakes. Rodolfo Fierro, the best-dressed among us except for the Americans in their neat khakis, wandered through the sitting room, inspecting the spinnet and the Currier & Ives prints. As usual, we avoided each other carefully. But Fierro forgot to take off his white Stetson.

Villa shouted at him across the room, “Take off your hat, you brute!” He turned to General Scott. “Forgive me, señor … that man is an animal.”

Scott seemed a little embarrassed, but Fierro just grinned like a naughty boy who had been scolded for his table manners.

I ate the best pineapple upside-down cake I’d ever tasted, and I gave Mrs. Scott my praise in English.

General Pershing turned to me with a cool look. The great man had finally recognized my presence. “I thought you were’ American, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t catch the name.”

“Mix, sir. Captain Thomas Mix.”

“You’re a Texan?”

“Yes, sir. From right here. El Paso.”

“Will you be offended if I give vent to my curiosity and ask why you’re an officer in General Villa’s army, and how it came about?”

“I won’t be offended at all,” I said. “It came about by accident, you might say, a year or so ago. But I serve General Villa now because I believe in his cause.”

That was the first time since Torreón that I had been able to come out with that and mean it, wholeheartedly, and it made me feel good. I was thinking of the boy with the sugar cane and the forty new schools in Chihuahua.

The general nodded, satisfied. “Were you formerly in the American army, Captain?”

“No, sir. I was a cowhand and a rodeo rider.”

“That’s interesting,” Pershing said, and I could almost see his mind filing it away in a neat compartment.

Villa asked me to translate this conversation, and when I finished he threw a bearlike arm around me.

Then he turned to the Americans.

“This man was with me when I crossed the Rio Bravo. Sometimes he acts like a
pendejo,
which I won’t explain since there are ladies present, but he fights like a tiger, rides like a devil, and buys guns like a Jew. I trust him as if he were my illegitimate son and commend him to you with all my heart. When the revolution is over, if he can’t find a job—as sometimes happens with soldiers—make him a captain in your army. He’ll serve you better than most.” Villa squeezed my shoulder. “In fact, right this minute, in honor of the occasion, and also because he deserves it. I’m going to promote him to major. Congratulations, Tomás.”

He shook my hand limply, and there was a light tattoo of applause in the room, mostly from the ladies, who knew very well what a
pendejo
was if they had been around El Paso for any length of time. I felt wonderful, and at the same time I felt like a fool.