“All the real men are in Jalisco, it would seem!” his aunt Rosario had said to him at his refusal—and the refusal of every man in the region—to join the new armed movement in defense of the Catholic Church.
He did his bit: he offered shelter to the new Father Pedro. He donated money so that the Catholic schools could continue their lessons and so that the holy sacraments could still be administered, albeit in secret. But there was a big difference between that and joining the pitched battle.
His fight—yesterday, today, and forever—was for his land. His struggle, until now, had involved only books, laws, and trees, but Lupita’s death tore him from his sense of security, from the false comfort he had taken from the feeling that he was winning the war over his land through ingenuity.
As long as there were those that coveted their fellow man’s land, there would be no peace. There would be no security.
He knew who had killed the girl. He did not know his face, because it could have been anyone, but he knew his intentions and motivations. He knew his whereabouts. It might be this one or that one. It might be all of them. But he knew who Lupita’s murderer mixed with, and now he was riding to join his men, whom he had arranged to meet near the scene of the crime to get rid of the agrarians once and for all.
Francisco had been content to contribute with a sizable sum of money to help maintain the Guardia Rural, the force that the land owners created. They patrolled, but it was a vast expanse of land, and however hard they tried, they could not be everywhere all the time. In the hills on his property, Francisco or his men often found remnants of cold fires, gnawed bones, hard pieces of discarded tortilla, a forgotten spoon, or even, on one occasion, a harmonica.
The agrarians moved from hill to hill every night or two to evade the rurales, and settled down to eat and sing their socialist songs under the stars as they plotted to rob those who slept placidly, like sheep, feeling secure.
Even after seeing the evidence of their incursions, Francisco had not been alarmed. He had always thought, Well, they were just passing through, they’ve left without causing trouble, and they won’t mess with me. However, since Lupita’s murder, he had not slept peacefully, because he knew that they were prowling around, surrounding them. And he would not sleep peacefully again until he could look his wife in the eyes and say, It’s over.
The previous night he had made a decision: the agrarians would not pass through his land again. They would not spend one more night on his property. And they would not dare use his land as a pillow or mattress or for shade or sustenance.
On his land there would no longer be a single sip of water with which the agrarians could continue to wet their resentment.
When he reached the agreed-upon place, all his workers were already there. He dismounted and passed out the weapons and ammunition that he had bought illegally from the local army barracks. He could have acquired them on his next trip to Laredo, but he had not wanted to wait: he needed to arm his men better. The 7 mm Mausers were much more accurate over a much greater distance than the old .30-30 Winchester carbines that they already knew, even without being expert marksmen.
“You’ll need to practice. I’ll give you the rounds. With the gunshots that will be heard on our land from now on, we’ll scare off the agrarians. We’re all going to protect our women and our land, because if we don’t do it, who will? So practice, and keep practicing, and if you see any invaders, shoot to kill.”
“Yes, Boss.”
Francisco Morales had never seen Anselmo Espiricueta respond with such enthusiasm.
49
The Aunt That Nobody Invites
When I lived here, all of Linares’s streets were numbered. Now look: Morelos, Allende, Hidalgo. Calle Madero and Calle Zapata run parallel, and two blocks down, they both meet Venustiano Carranza.
Just as the two men’s paths crossed in life, they are now destined to come together on the streets of Linares forever.
I don’t know whether, in the land of the dead, our revolutionary heroes are happy with the arrangement—whether being there has enabled them to settle their quarrels and grudges—but I can assure you that many of my relatives must be turning in their graves at the idea. I know that my aunt Refugio, in particular, must be grateful she isn’t alive to have to leave her house on Calle 2, under the old nomenclature, and see it called Calle Zapata. And for my grandmother, Sinforosa, it would have been worse: her street was renamed Venustiano Carranza, who she always blamed for making her a widow.
Turn here.
That one, on your left, was my grandmother’s house, which later went to my uncle Emilio, one of my mama’s brothers, when my grandmother was widowed. Now, like everything in Mexican city centers, which have been invaded by stores, it’s very down-at-the-heels, but at the time it was one of the largest and most attractive houses. I spent a lot of time there with the Cortés cousins, getting up to mischief. My mama always told me to behave or I wouldn’t be invited again, which I didn’t understand, because all I did there was copy my cousins.
I liked living in my house in the country, but waking up in downtown Linares also had its charm, because the sounds of the cathedral’s bells, the milkman’s whistle, and the knife grinder’s flute were all so close. Then the evangelists would knock on the door to do their evangelizing, to which whoever answered would respond, in irritated silence, by slamming the door on them. Lady acquaintances, friends, or aunts arrived constantly, saying that they were passing by and stopped to say hello. The challenge for us, then, was to slip away without being seen.
And then there were the neighbors: on one side, Sra. Meléndez who—my cousins swore—practiced sorcery like the witches of La Petaca, giving the evil eye to anyone who crossed her path. “Never let her look at you, Francisco, or your balls will fall off.”
You would’ve thought that, with that threat and the imminent danger that one could sense in the neighborhood, going to my cousins’ house would lose its appeal. But no: it was very exciting to sit for hours on the sidewalk, playing marbles, waiting for the first sign that the witch Meléndez would come out of her house. We avoided her seeing us at all costs but took any opportunity to spy on her. And we would follow her, because everything seemed suspicious to us: if she went into the church, it was to perform a spell. If she was buying fabric, it was to make herself some new witch’s clothes. If she was going to the drugstore, it was to obtain herbs for some potion. She moved with difficulty, as if one side of her body required the reluctant cooperation of the other. According to my cousins, the most conclusive proof of her devotion to the forces of evil was that the left side of her face, the side of the body where the heart is, belonged to another person.
“Look how, if one eye blinks, the other one doesn’t, and when one side of the mouth speaks, the other side stays still. See? Two people in one.”
Poor Sra. Meléndez. My cousins cared little that their mama visited their neighbor from time to time or that they went to the same church, frequented the same drugstore, and bought fabric at the same shop: one was a witch and the other was simply their mama.
That was the neighbor who was a witch, on one side. On the other, the Cortés house adjoined the Southern Star Masonic Lodge, which my cousin, with his endless ambition to be king, called on us to invade and conquer in a surprise attack. The first person had to scale the walls and then—waiting for it to be deserted, naturally—reach the heart of the enemy fortifications: the room with the round table and the swords. The first to arrive would not be made king; that would always be my eldest cousin, and there was no way to take his crown from him. Arriving first just gave us the right to choose the sword we wanted and to sit to the right of the throne, which according to my cousin, the king, was the greatest honor. As one of the youngest, I never got there first, and I barely had the strength to lift my sword, but my eldest cousin, who became the king as soon as we were through that doorway, made all of us knights: boys and girls.