“Hombre saber beber. Su ni pico.”
What the hell was the guy trying to say? Did he mean that he could drink and I couldn’t? I asked him, gesturing, and that cleared things up.
“Listen, you dumbass gringo, go ahead and challenge me, I’ll take you down.”
So because I don’t like to fight we sat down to drink, but not in the cantina. People had started to crowd around us, so we stayed in the plaza, one glass after another, to see who was more of a man.
The gringo cowboy seemed like good people, but it turned out he was nothing more than a shameless lush. We emptied our glasses, but you have to understand it was like he hadn’t even had one drop. I, on the other hand, was a goner, and sooner than I would have liked.
It was humiliating; I’m so old I ended up like a sack of potatoes. And what’s even worse is that once I was good and drunk they took the money from my pockets to pay for the drinks. My last pennies, the only money I had. When I felt them frisk me and take the money, I began screaming and screeching like a macaw.
“Gringo thief!”
Shears, that darned thug who wears a star on his chest just because no one else would take the job, that useless, good for nothing, idiot … He saw me drunk and furious and he announced, like Augustus, that he was going to lock me up.
What was I supposed to say? Hell no! Lock me up on account of a few drinks?
“What planet are you on?”
Folks broke out laughing when I said “what planet,” so Shears began to beat me.
That’s when that boy, Nepomuceno, appeared, and who knows what happened next; he threw me over his shoulder and we got outta there like bats outta hell.
And the worst thing of all is that the era of the vaquero is over, sitting by the campfire and grilling meat, scraping the strings, shooting the breeze, and reminiscing … these gringos have eaten our pigs, our cows. They’ve even eaten our memories.
PART TWO
(six weeks later…)
THE DARK, MOONLESS NIGHT is approaching its end. The sawing of the cicadas quickens, almost deafening.
In Matasánchez, in the courtyard of Aunt Cuca’s house, by the light of a candle in a hurricane lantern, Catalino approaches Sombra, Fidencio’s mule.
Sombra spent the night tied to the kitchen porch with a short rope “to keep her from eating the geraniums.” The mule pulled relentlessly at the cord, breaking thread after thread, until it wore long and thin. There are no geraniums left, Sombra nibbled them all, one by one.
“What to do with you, Sombra?!”
The previous afternoon, the kitchen girls, Lucha and Amalia, helped Catalino load the dovecote onto the cart, covering it with sacks of oats and a tarpaulin to disguise the cargo.
It was Lucha’s idea to protect the flowers by tethering Sombra with the short rope, but it would have been better to move the flowerpots.
Carefully—“Don’t get all worked up, my pretties”—Catalino loads onto Sombra’s back the cage made of reeds containing Favorita, the brothers’ favorite; Hidalgo, their best bird; and Pajarita, who always returns to Bruneville, no matter where she goes on land or water. “You’re prettier when you’re quiet, my little feather-balls.” Catalino always wakes up on the right side of the bed — he’s chatty this morning. But by the time the sun rises he’ll be silent — he’ll open his mouth only to read the messages from his pigeons.
“When that boy speaks he sounds like a little pigeon,” says Amalia.
He loads a flat sack of straw onto Sombra’s back, laying an old blanket — more holes than wool — on top of that, and he adjusts the harness to the cart. He unfastens the cart from the traces and, taking care not to tilt the dovecote too much, places the yoke onto Sombra’s harness and secures it.
Sombra is a faithful creature — gluttonous, but faithful — accustomed to following whomever is in front of her. There’s no need to tug at her or lead her by a rope. “That’s how you got your name, wherever I go, my little shadow, you’re right there behind me.”
Sombra is Fidencio’s pride and joy; the cart, rough and poorly made, is his shame.
Catalino opens the doorway to the street. He passes through with Sombra and “his pretties” behind him. He doesn’t turn to close it.
He’s taken only a few steps when he hears the cock crow. The pigeons reply with half-swallowed warbles, ooos that are more sad than songful. Catalino whistles a melody so no one will hear them and hurries along.
The horizon appears as a delicate blue line that turns pink in a matter of seconds.
Noontime yesterday instructions arrived: “Stay on their heels and keep us informed.” Hidalgo delivered the message.
The messenger pigeons have been dispatched from Bruneville to Matasánchez one by one, so as not to attract attention — an unnecessary precaution, as the gringos are all het up preparing for battle, they won’t notice birds. The place is brimming with amateur and professional gunmen armed to the hilt, itching to hunt Mexicans. Especially Bob Chess, who thinks of only one thing: laying a Mexican woman on the floor, yanking up her skirts by force, and nailing her, better yet if he tears her, feels her break. He imagines her body in detail. He thinks he’ll cut her braids, keep them as a trophy, long, heavy, shining plaits of hair, but he won’t keep any of her clothing, that might make his wife mad.
Catalino is moving all the pigeons to Nepomuceno’s camp. That’s why he hurries along anxiously through the center of town where the lamplighter is extinguishing the gas jets. As soon as he reaches the outskirts he stops whistling in order to move more quickly. He arrives at the Old Dock just when sunlight begins to illuminate the colors of the flowers, fruits, and grasses; the birds awaken little by little, and it’s in these moments that the landscape has the most flavor: there’s such an abundance south of the Bravo that it’s overwhelming.
Úrsulo, the river-watcher, awaits Catalino impatiently aboard his canoe, the Inspector, because he needs to make his nightly report to the Granny, I have lots to tell you of Matasánchez before the morning gets into full swing; it’s his job to watch the river while Matasánchez sleeps and report back after breakfast.
With Úrsulo in charge, the Eagles and Nepomuceno’s men come and go as they please. His eyes are like tombs: he sees everything but guards their secrets jealously; in his reports, the Río Bravo’s also a tomb: not a soul stirs on its banks or in its waters.
Without speaking or even nodding to each other Catalino and Úrsulo remove the tarpaulin from the cart and spread it in the belly of the canoe, securing the cages atop it with the same leather straps.
Catalino cracks the whip on the ground, which is enough to get the mule’s attention; she’s like her name, skittish, she’ll return to Fidencio pulling the empty cart. That’s why Catalino brought the whip. Úrsulo will return it via Doctor Velafuente.
Before boarding the Inspector they set Pajarita free, a message from the previous afternoon tied to her leg: “From the Old Dock”—just to let them know that the pigeons are traveling the right route.
Favorita will deliver it to Nicolaso in Bruneville.
These two brothers, separated by the river, are united by their pigeons’ secrets; what else do they keep hidden? It would be interesting to know, but we don’t have time for them now.
Catalino moves his pigeons in order to send messages to Bruneville and Matasánchez from Laguna del Diablo. Some are sitting on their eggs, soon there will be little chicks who will learn where home is: near Nepomuceno’s headquarters. In a few weeks they’ll already be learning to fly. He, Úrsulo, Alitas, or one of the many kids will deliver them in cages so that they can return bearing news. Dawn finds the Río Bravo in a mood contrary to Catalino’s: unruly, ill-humored, agitated, roiling unpredictably. It doesn’t matter to Úrsulo, he watches the surface and knows how to find his way.