Mexico (100 page)

It was fascinating to watch how perfectly these two young people meshed, the excited girl, the hesitant but proud young man in the first stages of his profession. As they sat beside me they seemed once more to lean toward each other, as they had at the testing. It was as if some supernatural force was acting upon them, and I found myself wishing that Mrs. Evans were here to dampen the ardor, for it was clear to me that this mutual attraction was getting way out of hand, with me powerless to control it.

Ledesma was equal to the task. "I'm so glad you decided to stop by, Pepe. That was a tremendous pair you placed today."

"I hope the photographers caught it."

'They couldn't miss. It'll be in all the papers." The two men were speaking in Spanish, but since Penny had studied that language in school, and Ledesma had excellent English and Huerta a respectable smattering, the conversation flowed easily. Penny said: "Mr. Clay told me he had more than a dozen shots, in color." Shyly she added: "He promised to send me a pair--for my room."

"It's too bad the espontaneo spoiled that last bull," Ledesma said. "You might have done something with that one--before he became unruly because of the crowd in the ring."

Huerta instandy transferred his interest to a dissection of the fight: "I'm sure I could have handled that bull. Did you notice how he had slowed down in pushing off with his hind feet when he started his charge? Veneno had really punished him with the lancing. Slowed down like that, I could have managed him."

Ledesma looked at me and nodded. Then, turning to Pepe, he asked: "And what brings you to our table?"

"At the tienta, Senorita Penny--" He pronounced her name with a delightful, musical accent.

"Don't you know her last name?" Ledesma asked coldly.

"She told me, Penny," the young man said hesitantly.

"You don't know her last name, but you come here--"

"Senor Ledesma, she invited me."

"If her father were here, you'd ask his permission, wouldn't you?"

"Yes ... yes. I would look for him, but she said he'd gone home."

"And left her in my care. I am--what you might call--her sobresaliente father."

With his adroit use of this bullfight term, which specifically identified the young would-be matador, the critic warned the aspirant that he must not pursue this matter of escorting Penny Grim, but the Oklahoma girl did not feel herself bound by this threat from the critic.

"I asked him to take me to see the celebrations," she told us, pointing to the plaza and the carousel.

Suddenly everyone's attention was deflected by the appearance of the two Leal brothers, who were quickly surrounded by squealing young women who had hoped to date their young brother Victoriano.

"Is he still in the hospital?" a blonde asked.

"Is he badly wounded?" cried another girl.

"Will he be able to fight again?" Their questions tumbled out in a mix of Spanish and English, and after some minutes of confusion, the two Leals allowed the girls to drag them off into the heart of the plaza. From the hotel doorway, their father, white-haired Veneno, watched his sons coping with a situation that occurred frequently: surrounded by adoring young women, mostly from the States.

"That is what you must not be," Ledesma said coldly as the obstreperous girls disappeared beyond the statue of Ixmiq. And to the young torero he said witfi even more coldness: "You have no engagement tonight, Pepe. I am this girl's father, and she is too young to accompany you unattended." As I listened to this astonishing performance I realized that he was speaking like the dutiful son of a Spanish family of good breeding. He was protecting his younger sister, who could not be allowed to wander off without a duena, and if Mrs. Evans had been thoughtless enough to leave the girl without proper chaperoning, he, Ledesma would have to correct that social error.

Penny, of course, did not see it that way. She had taken a strong liking to this highly acceptable young man. She had been thrilled by his magical performance with the sticks, and since she had for some time in Tulsa been accustomed to going out at night with her various youthfiil suitors, she expected to do so here. So despite what Senor Ledesma said, she proposed to keep her date with the sobresaliente, but when sh
e r
ose to do so, she came up against twin stone walls: Spanish custom and bullfight tradition.

Ledesma knew that he might be powerless to halt Penny, accustomed to her Oklahoma freedoms, but in disciplining young Pepe Huerta he was all-powerfiil. If the latter ignored the critic's direct orders, Ledesma had the capacity to forestall Huerta's rise in bullfight circles. He could pass the word to the impresarios not to bother with Pepe: "No talent. One pair doesn't make the man. You can skip him," and he would be skipped. Worse, he would be blackballed. Years would pass and he would receive no invitations to fight in the important arenas. Huerta knew I knew, and most of all, Le
o
n Ledesma knew, that what this boy did in the next few moments could determine his career.

"I apologize, Senor Ledesma. I should have asked your permission." Rising and turning to Penny, he said: "You were very brave this afternoon. I shall always remember."

With a cry that brought an ache to my heart, for I had forgotten how powerful emotions can be when one is seventeen, Penny rose, threw her arms about Huerta, and kissed him on the cheek, holding on to his left hand when she finished. "I'll have the pictures Mr. Clay took. I'll follow your career, Pepe, and I'll cheer you when you become famous. This was so wonderful. It could have been so wonderful," and she fell into her chair and put her face in her hands.

I indicated to Pepe that he should leave and, bowing to Ledesma, he did. As soon as he was gone, Penny rose to go to her room, but Ledesma grabbed her arm and pulled her back down: "We'll have no climbing out of windows, Senorita Grim. You'll wait here with me till Mrs. Evans returns from wherever she is."

I left them sitting there in silence as I hurried from the Terrace to see if I could overtake Huerta. I caught up to him under a lamplight where we spoke for some minutes: "You were very good today, Pepe. That's enough. It might lead to something."

"We did have an understanding. She did ask me."

Because of my own spotty track record I felt qualified to tell him: "Sometimes a man has to take it in silence when he loses his girl."

"Maybe I shouldn't have been there at all. The Terrace is for matadors."

"After a pair like yours today, you can sit anywhere. But now what?"

"Who knows? I don't get many fights."

"How many a season?"

"Maybe six. I think that pair today, if any of the newspapers prints it, that might help."

"Pepe, I could see you were going to try something special, so I took a series of rapid-fire shots, and if they turn out and my magazine prints a series, you'll get a lot more than six."

"Don't lose the film."

"And now what?"

"I have to get my gear. My parade cape, a fine old one, borrowed from a man in Guadalajara. A bull caught him, he don't fight anymore."

"And when you get your stuff?"

"I go to the station where the trucks leave for Guadalajara. The drivers know me. The Sunday-night runs. I'll be home by dawn."

"Pepe, I'm going to earn a lot of money on those shots of you. Let me give you your share now."

Proudly he refused: "I get by. My mother lets me live with her. I do all right."

"Pepe, damn it. You earned the money. It's your legal share."

"You mean, like a salary?" For this question he used the Spanish word sueldo, and I said eagerly: "That's it, your sueldo," and with a dignity that made me ashamed to look in his eyes, he accepted two ten-dollar bills.

When I returned to the Terrace I saw that Mrs. Evans had arrived in a fury and was behaving like the enraged widow of an Oklahoma oil millionaire: "Clay! How are we going to get that poor boy out of jail?"

'They have some eighteen thousand witnesses that he broke the law, nearly ruined the finale to the festival."

'Trivial. Fine him and set him loose."

"Fine him? Where would he get the money to pay it?"

"I'll help him. He's a fine lad, conducts himself well, and I will not see him rot in a Mexican jail."

"Mrs. Evans! He's in Mexico because he wanted to be here. And he's in jail because he was willing to take the risk of being arrested. Knew the penalty when he leaped into the ring. He won't rot."

Receiving no comfort from me, she importuned the Widow Palafox who reassured her: "It's not like the old days. They don't mistreat young men in jail no more. Two nights to scare him, he's free."

"Would your cousin, Don Eduardo, be able to help?" and die widow said: "He helps everyone. He runs Toledo," and upon urgings from Mrs. Evans she telephoned the ranch owner, who soon appeared: "What can I do?"

When Mrs. Evans started to explain, he cut her off: "I was there, remember? I saw what he did to my best bull. Almost ruined our festival. Let him rot in jail, two, three months. Teach him a lesson."

She could not accept this and spoke of appealing to the American ambassador in Mexico City, to whom she had brought a letter of introduction from influential friends in the oil business. This threat finally made an impression on Don Eduardo, for he summoned the widow and asked: "You say he's in our jail?" and when she nodded he rose, signaled to me and said: "We must see what we can do to get his release. But there will be the matter of the fine. Have you any money, Norman?"

"Not at this hour. Tomorrow, when the banks open--"

"I have traveler's checks," Mrs. Evans said, and she accompanied Don Eduardo and me to the jail at the far end of town. There, amid the obstreperous drunks who had been picked up at the festival and a group of prostitutes who had come into town from Mexico City, we found Ricardo Martin sitting quite contentedly with three young Mexicans about his own age. He was relating in fairly good Spanish his experiences with Victoriano's bull, making passes with his right hand as the imaginary bull swept past. He was, as they say, feeling no pain. He'd made it into the ring. He'd attacked his bull under great difficulties and had satisfied himself and others that he knew what bullfighting was. Not many young men his age enjoyed comparable success, and he could afford two or three days in confinement.

Mrs. Evans, who had visualized him in some medieval torture chamber, was disarmed when she found him reasonably at ease, but nevertheless she pursued her mission of freeing him: "What are the charges?"

The jailer shrugged, looked at Don Eduardo, and made no reply, but when she pestered him he growled: "I don't make charges. They bring him here, he's my problem. You want him out, that's your problem."

Don Eduardo agreed and said he'd call a lawyer, who appeared with a court official who explained that the charge was disturbing the peace at a public assembly, which involved five days in jail if found guilty, and everyone had seen that he was guilty. But if Ricardo paid his fine, the jailer could release him tonight.

"How much is his fine?" Mrs. Evans asked, and the official hesitated, then said tentatively, as if testing the water: 'Two thousand five hundred dollars American."

I gasped and so did the others, including Ricardo, but Don Eduardo exploded: "Ridiculous! Make it two hundred," and, deferring to Palafox, the official said: "All right, two hundred, but in dollars."

When Mrs. Evans unzipped her wallet and produced two traveler's checks, which she signed with an impatient flourish, the official asked Don Eduardo: "Will 1 be able to cash these at the bank--in the morning?" and my uncle said: "Better than pesos." To us he added: "In the old days I'd have stormed in here, head of the Palafoxes, and told them what to do, not asked, and there would have been no traveler's checks exchanging hands, believe me." He sighed. "Maybe the new days of responsible democracy are better, but I doubt it. No government account will ever see any part of the two hundred dollars. He'll give the jailer twenty-five, keep the rest for himself, and nobody's hurt."

When Ricardo was turned over to us, he asked permission to go back and say good-bye to his cellmates, and when this was granted he asked Mrs. Evans if she could lend him five dollars to buy his fellow prisoners some botdes of Coke, and she gave him the money. We then drove back to the Terrace, where Mrs. Evans rapped out a series of orders: "I'd like that table in that private corner. Clay, see if you can find the Widow Palafox, she's needed. Ricardo, wait over there for a few minutes, if you will." When all was done to her satisfaction, with the Widow Palafox seated at her elbow, she revealed her purpose in assembling us at the table: "I'm stuck down here with my Cadillac and no one to help me drive it back to Tulsa. Do I dare hire Ricardo to drive me home? I'd like to know what you think."

Don Eduardo's and my response was negative, the widow's mildly positive, and when the votes were on the table, as it were, Mrs. Evans became specific: "The plays you see, the movies about young drifters doing terrible things to older women. Do I dare risk it? Obviously I want to, but how can we tell if he's a stable young man and not some psycho, as the young people say?"

Don Eduardo made a cautionary observation: "The land between here and the Texas border can be pretty rough. There are old-time bandits really, it's no Easter holiday."